{"id":204,"date":"2014-04-13T16:41:51","date_gmt":"2014-04-13T23:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beyondtherealm.org\/?p=204"},"modified":"2014-04-13T16:41:51","modified_gmt":"2014-04-13T23:41:51","slug":"before-the-law-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/2014\/04\/13\/before-the-law-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Before The Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Franz Kafka\u2019s Before the Law<\/em> is\u00a0 a deliciously ambiguous parable that is part of his 1925 novel \u00a0The Trial<\/em> \u2013\u00a0 about a man from the country who goes to the king\u2019s castle in order to gain entry before the Law. \u00a0(Kafka doesn\u2019t explain \u00a0what he means by \u201cthe Law\u201d \u2013 and there is little consensus on this point \u2013 but I take it to mean \u201cthe Law\u201d as in the authority as to why things must be as they are, and in this context the King would be the ultimate authority here \u2026)<\/p>\n

And so he is granted permission to appear for the Law, and is led to a gate that leads to it. While the gate appears to be open, there is a gatekeeper preventing him entry and who tells him that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down by the side of the gate.<\/p>\n

There he waits for days, weeks, then months, all the while asking and negotiating with the gatekeeper to let him through. And although the gatekeeper continues to suggest that entry continues to be a possibility – but not just yet – eventually years go by and he ends up waiting his entire life<\/em>, to no avail, never gaining entry.<\/p>\n

Then, when he is about to die, he wonders why he was the only person waiting at this gate seeking entry before the Law. The gatekeeper tells him that, \u201cHere no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I\u2019m going now to close this gate\u201d.<\/p>\n

Kafka has the unique gift of being able to capture a critical insight into the larger human condition and weave it with great literary skill into an allegory that gives it away – but not quite. As a result, we can\u2019t always be sure of what aspect of our lives he is writing about. Countless interpretations have been provided by those who have studied Kafka\u2019s writings over the years, intrigued by his efforts to challenge us beyond the usual boundaries of our thinking about the world and the role we play within it.<\/p>\n

What I believe what he wrote about here is, once again, his own acute experience of being in the world without an apparent reason, and feeling compelled to make the assumption that there has to be an aspect of our existence that provides the justification for it. \u00a0And while this reason may be staring us directly in the face from the very day that we were\u00a0 brought into this world, how will we ever gain access to\u00a0 it?<\/p>\n

And so it appears that \u2013 while having evolved towards the capacity of being able to\u00a0consider<\/em> a reason for being, as in the question \u201cI want to know why I am here, and for what purpose?\u201d \u2013 being allowed to confront this question is no guarantee that you will be able to get it answered even if you are willing to dedicate a lifetime to it! At the same time, this is very much an individual<\/em> question, in the sense that it is meaningful only for those who feel the need to pursue the answer for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Franz Kafka\u2019s Before the Law is\u00a0 a deliciously ambiguous parable that is part of his 1925 novel \u00a0The Trial \u2013\u00a0 about a man from the country who goes to the king\u2019s castle in order to gain entry before the Law. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[478,479],"tags":[23,42,132,137,145,216,263,305,338],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people-politics-culture","category-philosophy-science-religion","tag-allegory","tag-before-the-law","tag-existentialism-is-a-humanism","tag-fate","tag-franz-kafka","tag-jean-paul-sartre","tag-meaning-of-life","tag-parable","tag-reason-for-being"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}