Kafka: Marxist critical analysis

      “Before the Law” is a short story by Kafka and is interesting due to Kafka’s background. Kafka’s life is fascinating because it is clear that Kafka was a person with several serious issues including possible mental illness and socioeconomic stress. His work is Kafkaesque, meaning that his work is struck with horror, alienation, and confusion. I did not completely agree with my group’s assessment that a reader-response critique was the most appropriate because I felt that a reader-response analysis was a cop-out. However, I went along with this assessment because they did not seem to buy my Marxist analysis of the story.

            I felt that a reader-response critique was not as useful as a Marxist analysis because one can literally use a reader-response critique to analyze any text and just say that there is meaning coming largely as a result of the style, verbiage, and structure that was used by the author yet is susceptible to the identity and perception of the reader. One must realize that some people analyzing a text can read a story and not take into account particular words and phrases that could stand out to other readers. Perhaps, a reader-response critique could be useful if that was the intention of the author but in this particular case the evidence provided in the story does not necessarily indicate this.  

It is very tempting to say that a psychological critique would be the most potent however this is probably true only if one has a cursory understanding of Kafka’s life which was full of abnormalities that one would not find in most people’s lives. A psychological critique could possibly be the most interesting but there are key words used in the story that indicate the contrary. A psychological critique is a form of analysis that again could work but does not suffice for this story. Possible ways to look at this from a critical psychological perspective could be looking at the story as a kind of stream of consciousness, a natural flow of ideas that were edited by the author after. Another way to look at the story from the psychological realm could be analyzing the use of word choice like looking at the particular descriptions of the antagonist and the way words are used when the antagonist and protagonist are communicating.

Due to my possible inherent bias, a Marxist analysis seems the most useful however I think I can provide enough evidence to support my analysis. My first line of defense is the fact that there is a protagonist and antagonist. One can argue that this is very common in literature and I would probably agree but one must take into account that there is primarily one character fighting or arguing against a superior. This is important to look at from a Marxist viewpoint because Marxists argue that the ownership class or capitalist class dominates the oppressed working class. To make the comparison between the domineering presence of the gatekeeper and the man struggling before the law is not a stretch from my view.

The evidence is present in the diction, tone, mood, and syntax used in the story. The diction tells us a lot about the kind of words that the author thought was important to signify to the reader the point he was trying to make about the power dynamic between the gatekeeper and the “man from the country” who “spends everything” in order to get past the gatekeeper who wears a “fur coat.” The tone the author employs is sullen, morbid, anxious. This can be seen in the text where the protagonist “sits for days and years” who “is already dying” and “curses the unlucky circumstance”. The mood is rejected and depressed. The mood is rejected as the man constantly tries to gain entrance but is not allowed to enter like an adolescent trying to gain access to a nightclub against the will of the domineering bouncer. The depressed mood can be seen as the protagonist “no longer has much time to live.” The syntax is the least obvious but if one looks closely at sentences like: The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.” in contrast to the sentence before, the final sentence’s structure shows a clear desire to convey the gatekeeper’s explanation to the protagonist even though he is at the verge of death.Word Count: 759