Before the Law

Here is a text:

Before the Law

by Franz Kafka

“Before the Law stands a doorkeeper on guard.  To this doorkeeper there comes
a man from the country who begs for admittance to the Law.  But the
doorkeeper says that he cannot admit the man at the moment.  The man, on
reflection, asks if he will be allowed, then, to enter later.  ‘It is
possible,’ answers the doorkeeper, ‘but not at the moment.’   Since the door
leading into the Law stands open as usual and the doorkeeper steps to one
side, the man bends down to peer through the entrance.  When the doorkeeper
sees that, he laughs and says: ‘If you are so strongly tempted, try to get in
without my permission.  But note that I am powerful.  And I am only the
lowest doorkeeper.  From hall to hall keepers stand at every door, one more
powerful than the other.  Even the third of these has an aspect that even I
cannot bear to look at.’  These are difficulties which the man from the
country had not expected to meet.  The Law, he thinks should be accessible to
every man and at all times, but when he looks more closely at the doorkeeper
in his furred robe, with his huge pointed nose and long thin Tartar beard, he
decides that he had better wait until he gets permission to enter.  There he
sits waiting for days and years.  He makes many attempts to be allowed in and
wearies the doorkeeper with his importunity.  The doorkeeper often engages
him with brief conversation, asking him about his home and about other
matters, but the questions are put quite impersonally, as great men put
questions, and always conclude with the statement that the man cannot be
allowed to enter yet.  The man, who has equipped himself with many things for
his journey, parts with all he has, however valuable, in the hope of bribing
the doorkeeper.  The doorkeeper accepts it all, saying, however, as he takes
each gift: ‘I take this only to keep you from feeling that you have left
something undone.’  During all these years the man watches the doorkeeper
almost incessantly.  He forgets about the other doorkeepers, and this one
seems to him the only barrier between himself and the Law.  In the first
years he curses his evil fate aloud; later, as he grows old, he only mutters
to himself.  He grows childish, and since in his prolonged watch he has
learned even the fleas in the doorkeeper’s collar, he begs the very fleas to
help him and to persuade the doorkeeper to change his mind.  Finally his eyes
grow dim and he does not know whether the world is really darkening around
him or whether his eyes are only deceiving him.  But in the darkness he can
now perceive a radiance that streams immortally from the door of the Law.
 Now his life is drawing to a close.  Before he dies, all that he has
experienced during the whole time of his sojourn condenses in his mind into
one question, which he has never yet put to the doorkeeper.  He beckons the
doorkeeper, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body.  The doorkeeper
has to bend far down to hear him, for the difference in size has increased
very much to the man’s disadvantage.  ‘What do you want to know now?’ asks
the doorkeeper, ‘you are insatiable.’  ‘Everyone strives to attain the
Law,’ answers the man, ‘how does it come about, then, that in all these
years no one has come seeking admittance but me?’  The doorkeeper perceives
that man is at the end of his strength and that his hearing is failing, so he
bellows in his ear: ‘No one but you could gain admittance through this door,
since this door was intended only for you.  I am now going to shut it.’”

Let's read it.

I have "taught" this text hundreds of times. Personally, I still do not have
a single preferred reading. I have read Kafka's journals, all of his other
works, his biographies, and even his letters -- many times. I still do not
have any firm idea as to his "intent" when he wrote it. I have readings that
I believe are more valid than others. I do not think this is especially
about speedboats, for instance. When I teach it, especially in America,
students often quickly offer up what I call the Nike reading (Just do it) --
that it is a parable about going for it -- about struggling for your goals
rather than waiting passively for someone to give them to you. Another
version of this, among the guys usually, is what I call the Rambo
interpretation. The lesson is that he should have just forced his way in.
The guard was probably lying about the other doorkeepers anyway. The door
was his in any case, he should have just barreled through. It's a lesson
about the dangers of meekness and the value of strength and action. They all
usually notice immediately that they do not know precisely what the "Law" is.

I know that this is a narrative that Kafka chose to include in a longer piece
(his novel *The Trial*). I also know that he chose to publish it separately
as well. He called it a parable, although it does not fulfill the
conventions of the genre. (What is the clearly taught lesson, after all, and
why, in the novel, doesn't Joseph K. realize it as soon as he hears it?)

But what else might be happening here? What else might this be about, when
you read it?

Many people have read it as a theological narrative -- a story about entrance
into some sort of final judgment. This fits with Kafka's interest in
Rabbinical texts, but would be at odds a bit with his own documented beliefs.
 But the interpretation still proves valuable in certain contexts. It does
raise interesting questions about the responsibility of God and the
responsibility of Man in relation to the Sacred Law.

Other people have argued that it is a tale about bureaucracy (something Kafka
had to deal with day in and day out in his job and in his nation, which was
undergoing massive governmental restructuring at the time this was written).
It is a tale about officials and rules and their effects on justice or the
possibility of justice. This would have been of primary importance in
Kafka's daily life as an insurance claims worker who chronicled machine
accidents in his newly industrialized country.

Still others have seen it as a psychological tale about the struggle that
goes on inside the minds of all of us, of a sort of everyman, as he seeks
answers to difficult existential questions. How bold are we, how brave are
we when we face the most important questions. What are the forces that make
us resist, what are the means we are likely to employ in searching for what
should be open and accessible to us at all times, especially if each of us is
entitled to understand our own singular or universal law, our own reason for
being here? Should we, will we, as Eliot says, have the strength to force the
moment to its crisis?

At this point, I often offer my students two other readings of which I am
particularly fond. One is a criticism of their preferred reading of a call
to acquisition and action. It is a philosophical reading in which the
narrative raises a profound dilemma; one in which, perhaps the story is
suggesting, thinking people often find themselves. What has the man come
for? He has come for admittance to the Law. He has come for the Law. He
seeks the Law. It is, we suppose, something he considers important, possibly
even sacred, certainly, at least, something to be taken seriously, even to
wait one's entire life for. In that case, what is the one thing that he can
under no circumstances do? Break the Law, of course. By going in he rejects
precisely what he came for. If this gate is indeed the door to the Law and
the doorkeeper is its representative, then he cannot simply force himself in
without going against precisely that which he has come seeking. Perhaps
there are lessons here. Perhaps this is the way the Law works. It places
us, constantly, in a genuine double bind and challenges us to live
meaningfully, even joyfully, all the while knowing the interminable nature of
our desire. In fact, perhaps this is one of the Laws of desire. For neither
can he turn away and return to the country. For this is his door -- only for
him. This is what he must seek even as it is constantly denied him. In this
case, the parable does not teach a lesson. It poses a problem (or, more
properly, a set of problems) and challenges us to think through them knowing
that it will not solve them for us. It demands our attention, and that we
participate -- like the man from the country, even as it denies us final
admittance to it's "meaning."

This leads to the second reading I often offer my students. This can also be
read, usefully, I think, as a narrative about reading. This might also be a
story in part about reading stories, about how we read, about what happens
when we come before a text seeking admittance. We become that man from the
country. In some case, (think of Joyce, or Melville, or, of course and
especially, Kafka himself), the text resists our admittance. It all but
tells us we will not be allowed in at this time. It refuses to tell us
exactly why. It challenges us to read more, prepare better, think harder, but
all the while it denies us the light that is shining just beyond our ability
to perceive. We, like the man, think the Law, think the meaning should be
open and accessible to everyone and that everyone strives to attain meaning,
the Law of the text. So we are frustrated when, like this very parable
itself, the Law is guarded and poses a seemingly insurmountable challenge to
our desire to gain access, to understand. And so we must make choices. We
must decide what to do. We can sit and wait for the text to announce to us
what it means -- for the author or the novel or the story or the poem to
appear and unfold before us and grant us access -- or we can choose to
participate in the creation of that meaning. We can do some of the work of
the Law for ourselves. Once that happens, of course, then the Law will
become at least partially singular (each door will be meant "only for you"),
but it will become an open door, even if it is finally just yours. If we
decide not to participate, or deny our own participation in the creation of
meaning -- if we wait for word from the creator, then our dying hour will no
doubt be disappointment and misery and perhaps the story suggests that this
will be what we deserve. Perhaps the story is challenging us to be that man
from the country as we come before this law, this text, and it chooses to
challenge us rather than simply admitting us.

Is any of this what Kafka intended? Are any of these readings (or all of
them) the ones he "had in mind"? I have never been able to find out and,
frankly, my interest in that question is of a much more trivial nature (as a
sort of personality of interest question) than my interest in these readings
and what they can offer those with whom I am sharing the experience of this
little story. The question of original intent does not go away, it is not
made impossible; it simply becomes much less important at this point.

If one of my students asks me "What did Kafka mean by this story?" -- I
answer honestly. I don't know. I can tell you some of my ideas and some of
what I know about him and about when it was written and about the world at
the time and I can read it with you and I can give you other people's
readings of it. But none of that will tell you what Kafka "meant by this
story." I can tell you that when you write about it or discuss it, one way
you can determine whether your reading is a reasonable or valid one is by
seeing how much of the text itself you are able to use in support of your
interpretation. If you are unable to use much of the text at all to support
your reading, I will probably not consider it as valid or as useful or as
significant than I will if you are able to cite and incorporate specifics
from the text into your reading. I am not claiming that therefore you are
getting closer or farther from what Kafka thought. I am only telling you,
almost arbitrarily, that this is how I will measure your responses, by
noticing how carefully and how deliberately and how patiently and how
thoroughly and even how joyfully and yes even how creatively you read. But
in the end, we will have read this thing. We will have read it many times.
We will have read it closely. We will have thought about it and argued about
it over a long period of time and in significant detail and in significant
depth. And we will, I hope, all have learned something.

That, for me, is the relationship between reading and meaning and intention,
between authors and readers.

Thanks for reading all of this.

All the best,

--John

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Received on Wed Mar 5 20:06:45 2003