Blog Post One: "Before the Law"

My group’s reading of Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” was analyzed from a Marxist approach due to the fact that is appears that the man and the gatekeeper exhibit a difference in social class. Each member concurred that the man embodies those of the lower class with the desire to achieve higher status, while the gatekeeper embodies those of the upper class who are not allowing those of a lower status to have equal opportunities or attempting to assist them in their endeavors to discover how they can also succeed in a society that exhibits qualities of a class system. This conclusion was made because the man is “from the country,” indicating that he is of a lower social status, and the gatekeeper possesses the power to grant or deny entry to what is past the gate (Kafka 1). We determined that the poor man from the country’s desire is a desire for wealth, power, and high status, and the gatekeeper possesses all of these given that he has all of the authority to allow or not allow the man access. Overall, it was concluded that the entirety of the short story exemplifies not only the differences between social classes, but also the division between them.

Another feasible approach to analyze this piece is the reader response theory due to the the evidence that the piece provides the freedom to interpret this in a number of ways depending on the individual’s own thoughts and opinions. For example, the ending of the story, specifically, is extremely opaque and very open for interpretation due to its vagueness given that there are many different manners in which one could interpret as the gate being specifically reserved for the man. While the man approaches death, the gatekeeper exclaims that “no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to [the man and he is] going now to close it” (Kafka 1). This conclusion to the story proves to be unclear given that it leaves the story almost unresolved. With this type of an ending, it raises questions and can lead to a multitude of interpretations because it is so vague. Analyzing the piece while employing the reader response theory permits a number of interpretations that have the potential to be valid due to the whole story’s lack of specificity and development in the character descriptions and the openness for interpretation that the ending leaves.

Despite how the reader response theory has the ability to address how the story’s non-transparent qualities allow for many interpretations to be employed, a Marxist approach proves to be more applicable. Because of the opaqueness of the short piece, it can be difficult to utilize or apply the reader response theory to seek its meaning because the theory itself is unspecific to what any piece has the potential to mean. While it does narrow the overall analysis, what the Marxist approach accomplishes that the reader response theory does not, is that it better addresses the aspects of the story that the reader response theory alone cannot. A Marxist approach serves to be a more practical manner of addressing what the work expresses with the detail it does have. Throughout the story, it is clear that the gatekeeper and the man are symbols of differences in class given that the man is from the country and the gatekeeper has the power to deny him passage. For example, toward the beginning of the piece, the man expresses that “the law should be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside” (Kafka 1). Here, it is evident that the man intended to attempt to pass the gatekeeper in order to pass, but once he notices the gatekeeper’s posh wardrobe, he decides that it would be better to seek permission. Evidently, this demonstrates that the gatekeeper’s wardrobe is an indicator of his power as an upper class member because clothing often has the ability to distinguish people from the different classes within society. The work possesses minimal detail, yet the details that Kafka does include are ones that describe status and power. In other words, because these are details that Kafka does include with the story’s lack of transparency, it is logical to conclude that the story is reflective of the differences in class, more specifically how those in the upper class have the ability to control the lives of those in the lower classes.