Chpt4

Trying to read "Before the Law" allegorically, even if you want to, is no easy matter. Instead of simplistic concrete images, we have large abstractions like the law, leaving the reader left searching for what it actually represents. We have a man from the country—who does he represent? What's the doorkeeper's business? So, although we have a parable, it's not easy to decipher. Is Kafka satirizing this form, or demonstrating how problematic interpretation can be? You have this image of a doorkeeper, of a gate, of many gates and many doorkeepers, each one even more powerful than the last. What do these doorkeeper's represent in Kafka's parable? This man from the country has no such aid, it seems, or is it that he just doesn't ask for any? The doorkeepers may represent obstacles to justice or maybe they are injustice personified. They are the essence of unfairness. They are guarding the law, keeping people out, after all. If you could get past these doorkeepers you'd be getting past injustice.
In "Before the Law" we don't know if we're dealing with divine law or human law, but since there's no mention of anything divine, it's probably okay to assume we're dealing with human law. But in each case, isn't the law signifying the same thing? It is all law. What is law? Isn't it our attempt to impose rationality and order upon chaos? Law is the basis of civilization, what separates us from our primitive natures, which is an effort to impose our power of reason upon all of our other impulses, and to give meaning to our actions by imposing consequences on them. But in "Before the Law" the man from the country cannot even be "admitted." He's stuck outside. He can't get in. What does this imply, that the Law is so inaccessible to him?
Kaiti g.