Imagine being arrested. You’re not told what you’re arrested for, or who will take you in, or even how long you’ll be in jail for. You’re immediately put on trial, with no knowledge still of what you did, what evidence was found, or when you’ll be able to leave. Thus begins, and continues The Trial by Franz Kafka. It embodies the core tenets of “kafkaesque”, a word coined decades after Kafka’s death to describe his style of writing and novels. 

All of Kafka’s works reflect an existentialist view, simply that life has no inherent meaning, and that humans ought to struggle to find meaning. Kafkaesque takes this one step farther. Kafkaesque describes situations where the setting is often bureaucratic, and hard to navigate logistically, making success near impossible, and if attainable, still not worthy of anything. For example, in The Metamorphosis, the main character wakes up as a bug, and his first thought is how he should manage to get to work in this new form.

This blatant disregard for the individual in favour of the system and its success is a core tenant of Kafkaesque. The combined effect of the human ego, and a reluctance to question the system, or recognize that success is futile is what characterizes Kafka as an existential thinker. 

Kafka’s works often reflect a system set up in a way that is convoluted and difficult to understand, it can often make reading his work a task as well. The main character often struggles to find success because of how terribly the system is set up, and finds that even when they do accomplish their original goal, the sheer process of getting there makes it unattainable. Kafka’s works often also criticize the role of the human ego in such situations, pointing out how one’s own ego and unwillingness to surrender to the system can actually be a sore point. 

We see characters from Kafka’s novels struggle to fight against their oppressive systems in the beginning of the book, but slowly lose hope as the story continues. Each of them slowly realizes the absurdity of their situation, and the fact that success is unlikely, and unattainable in these circumstances. Kafka argues that by recognizing at once the nature of these situations, one can be spared from having to fight, knowing that success is illogical under these circumstances. 

Kafka doesn’t argue that life is essentially meaningless and that one should stop fighting altogether, but rather that one should recognize the limits of the situation, and choose when to fight against the system and when not to. In this way, he champions a more balanced approach to life, that recognizes both when to find meaning, and when to not.