There are books that are simply enjoyable to read, and there are books that feel like a slow pressure building in your chest. The Trial by Franz Kafka is the latter. From the first page to the last, reading it felt like being stuck in a fever dream, one where no matter which direction you turn, every path leads to a dead end. And yet, despite not particularly enjoying the experience of reading it, I found myself deeply impressed by what Kafka managed to create.

One morning, without any explanation, Josef K. is arrested. He is not told what he is accused of, not given any information about the court, and yet from that moment on, his entire existence becomes consumed by a trial he never asked for. What struck me most while reading was how quickly he gets pulled into the logic of the system. He is innocent, or at least we are led to believe so, and yet he almost immediately starts behaving like someone who has something to prove. Instead of simply rejecting the absurdity of the situation, he begins to justify himself, to strategize, to seek out lawyers and influential contacts. In trying to fight the system on its own terms, he quietly accepts its authority over him.

I think this is one of the most uncomfortable things the book reveals. The moment you engage with an unjust system, you give it a certain legitimacy. Josef K. is never proven guilty. But the world around him treats him as though he already is, and slowly, almost without noticing, he starts to internalize that as well. There is something very recognizable in that. Most of us have probably been in situations where we felt the need to justify ourselves not because we had done anything wrong, but because the expectation was there. The social pressure alone is enough to make you feel responsible.

What makes the situation even more suffocating is the nature of the system itself. Throughout the book, Josef K. encounters lawyers, court officials, painters with connections to the court, and various other figures who all claim to have some understanding of how things work. But the more people he speaks to, the clearer it becomes that nobody actually understands anything. The lawyer Huld speaks with great authority about the court and his own influence, yet achieves nothing. Titorelli the painter explains that there are technically three possible outcomes, but essentially admits that a real acquittal is almost unheard of. Everyone within the system has a role, a title, a sense of their own importance, and yet the system itself produces no clarity, no resolution, and no justice. Everyone is lost, but nobody admits it. That, I think, is the most accurate and still very relevant part of Kafka’s vision.

What also stayed with me is how this logic extends even to personal relationships. Almost no one in the book connects with Josef K. as a person. His lawyer needs him as a client just as much as K. needs the lawyer. Leni, the lawyer’s caretaker, is drawn to him not out of genuine feeling but seemingly because he is an accused man, which appears to be a pattern for her. His uncle shows up out of family obligation rather than real concern. The relationships feel transactional, structured around the circumstances of the trial rather than any authentic human connection. In a way, the people around him mirror the system itself: everything is conditional, and nothing is truly there.

One of the most memorable scenes for me was in the cathedral, where a priest tells Josef K. the parable known as Before the Law. A man from the countryside comes seeking entry to the law and finds a doorkeeper blocking his way. He waits his entire life, tries everything, and is never let in. Just before he dies, he asks why no one else has ever come to this entrance. The doorkeeper tells him: this entrance was made only for you, and now I will close it. It is a deeply unsettling moment, not because it is dramatic, but because it is quiet. The man was not forcibly kept out. He waited willingly, hoping for permission that was never going to come.

I found myself rereading that passage after finishing the book, because it reframed a lot of what came before. Josef K. also keeps waiting, keeps hoping that the right contact or the right strategy will eventually open a door for him. And like the man in the parable, he never considers that maybe the door itself is not the point.

After I finished the book and read some analyses of it, I understood that many of the scenes I had found random or strange while reading were not meant to be taken literally at all. They are metaphors, each one adding another layer to the same central idea: a world where the rules are unclear, the authority is untouchable, and the individual is always, somehow, already guilty. Kafka never explains this, never resolves it. He just builds the atmosphere until it becomes suffocating, and then ends the book in the only way that feels inevitable.

I admire the craft behind it deeply. Whether I enjoyed the experience of it is a different question entirely.