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this is the archive of a discussion on the franz kafka discussion list. one person posted questions about the story (message 1), some else replied (message 2), and then went back and forth for a fewmore messages. this is the chronological account of their dialoge (just follow the "next" and "previous" buttons to navigate), and the messages have not been edited or altered in any way. on a similar note, though, because of this discussion, i wrote my own interpretation of "before the law". check it out if you like.
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First, don't worry about mistakes. The dedication to the study of Kafka that leads you to brave the English waters will make your contributions very valuable.
I agree fully with your suggestion that biographical information be held in abeyance in our interpretation here and certainly don't intend to bring it up. Also, there's that bothersome tendency to laud and thereby mystify the author-- I assume this is what you were referring to when you said he should not be approached as an eccentric-- which I think we should have no difficulty avoiding. In short, between the two of us at least, the guidelines can be used to focus the study.
Before jumping in, I admit that I am confused about your suggestion that metaphor and parable should not be "made clear." I am afraid I might be giulty of this and so will give an example. If you can show me the faiing, I'll happily discard the method.
When I first read "Before the Law' I determined that it had a message. The gatekeeper does not tell the wanderer that it is forbidden for him to force his way into the Law; he says "If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers." I took this to be a taunt: the gatekeeper tells the wanderer that the way in is to fight him, and dares him to do so. The moral of the parable becomes: fight your way into righteousness (or something like that). Now, this -- while it does not assume the parable to be a faulty or muddled description of something better said another way (note how stupid the paraphrased moral sounds)-- it does attempt to clarify by paraphrase. A part of me is sure you couldn't possibly be against this, and yet I am not sure exactly what you mean by "retroversion of images" and thus can't be sure I'm not doing it.
On to your questions:
2) I think the only way we can legitimately enter into the processs of interpreting what the Law is, is by figuring out what all the other parts of the image are and then seeing what limitations they place on its definition. The Law seems to be the most mysterious of the objects in the story and I think it'll be worth while to place it in the tentative center.
1) Frankly, I can't say what the Law is until we've agreed on the answers to some other questions. I'll throw out a few guesses, but they won't be based as throughly on the text as I'd like them to be eventually.
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1) the Law is the thing you must act and think and, frankly, be in accordance with if you don't want to be put in prison. This ends up being equivalent to something like "the great scheme of things."
2) the Law is freedom.
Based on the parable alone, the Law is simply presented as the place into which one wants entry. With what the story gives us, we have to assume either that the man from the country did everything right and that you just don't get to get into Law but have to wait on a stool, or that he failed to do the thing that would get him in. I tend to discount the first possibility on the grounds that the door was made for him alone and that the phrase "no one else could have been admitted" implies that the man from the country could have been admitted. So, that narrows the tentative definition to: The Law is something you can't just sit there to get into. Like most parables, it seems the parts would apply in cases of varying profundity. I mean, you can't just sit on your ass and expect doors to open for you and people to make things easy... in general.
There is a specification that I find very interesting, though. The man from the country makes many attempts at entry. Bribery is named as one instance. So, there was a specific thing the man wasn't doing. I think once we've determined what that is, we can move on to what the gatekeeper represents etc etc. I've thrown out the hypothesis that he wasn't fighting the gatekeeper. What do you think about that? Would you propose another answer?
Finally, I haven't done the research and don't know if "Before the Law" was written as part of The Trial or as an independent thing and later added into the book. If it was written as a part of it, then we might want to consider viewing it as a part of The Trial. Regardless, I think studying it on its own first is pretty much necessary if we want to look at it as part of The Trial at all.
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