Early in the morning, unknown people break into Josef K.’s house. He is arrested. The reason remains unknown. Attempts to find out “for what” and how to justify it turn out to be futile. Josef K. desperately tries to talk to the judges – to no avail. It only gets more and more entangled in the labyrinth of surreal bureaucracy.
Is the process progressing? Neither he nor the audience knows. The court’s decision is also unknown, but Josef K. feels that his time is running out. Everything has turned into a senseless chase for information about a mysterious verdict. He comes to realise that his life was never his own. For the last year of his life, Josef K. lives under the pressure of a legal process, about which no one knows anything. Even the judges handling his case do not know what the character is accused of. He is guilty simply because, in this life, every person can be guilty of something – and that is enough. Once upon a time, Shakespeare compared human life to theatre. Kafka went even further: he saw life as one endless trial, senseless and merciless.
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