Page 31 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
Lasine, a G•Scholar, dismisses that if Josef K and Job insist they are “impatient” or ‘ungeduldig’ (21:4; T223),147 and the “victims of injustice,”148 in Josef K there is a “crucial indeterminacy between an implied assumption of guilt and an implied assumption of innocence.”149 To Dodd, there is ambiguity in the story telling technique.150 The contention of guilt is not as straightforward.151 At first, Josef K’s outrage and protests of innocence are indirect reports (T4-9). Franz, the Warden tells Willem that Josef K admits he does not know the Law and yet claims he is innocent” (T9). In many other oblique ways, the self-centered narrative seduces lectors to see what K sees.152 A voice of an “independent observer subtly and crucially refrains in ‘hätte,’ hesitating to endorse K’s assumed words.”153 Thus, the aura of ambiguity in the story telling technique remains, and Josef K’s guilt is shrouded in mystery.154 To Dodd, the ambiguity disappears if the narrative were to announce K is arrested ‘ohne daß er etwas Böses getan hätte.’155 Thus, shrouded in twilight, the “novel’s theme is a dramatized controversy, or a war of attrition between conflicting perspectives on K’s guilt.”156 Therefore, if Josef K can never admit guilt, it is because it is futile and shrouded in authorial mystery. If Kafka does not openly admit it, then G•Scholars cannot assert it in any definitive way, even when Lasine concedes that, “K is arrested because of his guilt, while Job is afflicted precisely because God sees his innocence.”157 Even if the Book of Job and The Trial’s narratives are crisscrossed, and appear to assert Josef K’s guilt, ambiguity remains. If lectors know the reason for Job’s trial, they ignore the reason and nature of K’s trial. They only know that K and Job are “[assaulted] ‘überfallen’” (1:17; T12, 18).158
If we crisscross both texts, the uncanny arises. Job mistakes not only the nature of his trial, but also the divine bandit. In Job, Job’s friends speak Satan’s Guilt Whispers tainting Job with sin. Satan, the guilt-culprit, spreads guilt- consciousness, not Yahweh directly, although Yahweh does authorize Job’s harm. Thus, Job mistakes a Yahweh- Revolt for a Satan-Revolt. Just as Satan’s guilt theology predicates, “no one is innocent or pure before His Maker” (4:17), the Moral Courts predicate it of Job and Josef K. In The Trial, manipulated by Satan’s whispers, they are guilty in the deceived eyes of everyone.
F = Friends
S = Satan
SGT = Satan Guilt Theology T = Truth
Tf = Therefore
147 Lasine, Stuart. “The Trials of Job and Kafka’s Josef K.” The German Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2, Focus: Jews and Germans/Jewish–German Literature (Spring, 1990), 189
148 Lasine, Stuart. “The Trials of Job and Kafka’s Josef K.” The German Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2, Focus: Jews and Germans/Jewish–German Literature (Spring, 1990), 189
149 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 31
150 Marson argues that the narrative technique is a window into K’s consciousness allowing lectors solely to perceive K’s perceptions. Marson, Eric. Kafka’s Trial: The Case Against Josef K. St. Lucia, Queensland: U Of Queensland Press, 1975. 4. Kafka uses the indirect third person narration to express K’s sentiments. Lothe, Jakob, Speirs, Ronald and Sandberg, Beatrice. Franz Kafka. Narration, Rhetoric, and Reading. Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2011. 68. Josef K believes himself innocent; however, the omniscient narrator does not affirm it as a fact. In this form of experienced speech, the narrative mode creates a false sense of objective realism. Robertson, Richie. Reading the clues: Franz Kafka, Der Prozeß, in David Midgley (ed.). The German Novel in the Twentieth Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993. 59-79, 69. See Scott, Len. Josef K.: Kafka’s Anti-Job. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2010. 4-6
151 Dodd,William.DerProzess.Scotland:UniversityofGlasgowFrenchandGermanPublications,1991.31
152 Marson, Eric. Kafka’s Trial: The Case Against Josef K. St. Lucia, Queensland: U Of Queensland Press, 1975. 4. In Scott, Len. Josef K.: Kafka’s Anti-Job. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2010. 4-6
153 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 33
154 Dodd,William.DerProzess.Scotland:UniversityofGlasgowFrenchandGermanPublications,1991.33
155 “Without doubt he had done something evil.” Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 31
156 Dodd,William.DerProzess.Scotland:UniversityofGlasgowFrenchandGermanPublications,1991.41
157 Lasine,Stuart.“TheTrialsofJobandKafka’sJosefK.”TheGermanQuarterly,Vol.63,No.2,Focus:JewsandGermans/Jewish–GermanLiterature(Spring,
1990), 189
158 Lasine, Stuart. “The Trials of Job and Kafka’s Josef K.” The German Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2, Focus: Jews and Germans/Jewish–German Literature (Spring,
1990), 189. Lasine adds in footnote 11, “Luther uses the verb “uberfallen” when translating the Hebrew verb pasat in Job 1:17.” 196 —31—