Blog Post 1: Topic #1 Amy Joo

After reading the short story, “Before the Law” written by Franz Kafka, my group analyzed it by engaging in Marxist criticism, which is used when the characters in the story can be divided based on their socioeconomic status. In “Before the Law,” many inequalities in the characters can be detected based on their background and language. A man, who asks to enter into the law, is described as a countryman, while the gatekeeper, who tells the man that he himself is powerful, is depicted as a high-status man. Based on the gatekeeper’s condescending tone and the country man’s non-educational thoughts, we can differentiate the characters’ intelligence and motifs as well. The gatekeeper asks couple questions about the country man’s hometown and many things, but his questions are indifferent and short and do not relate to the entry into the law at all. Merely without any thoughts of giving the man the access to law, the gatekeeper is asking these questions out of his own curiosity or boredom. On the other hand, the countryman thinks too simple of the law in this world; he thinks giving valuable items to the gatekeeper would allow him to gain entry to law. He also believes that “the law should be accessible for everyone” (Kafka); clearly we can tell that as a countryman, he is not used to strict rules. To him, laws can be upheld or broken based on the gatekeepers’ appetite. Because he thought some precious items could attract the gatekeeper to give entry into the law, he becomes mad and tired of the gatekeeper’s inflexibility about rules. With the knowledge of the characters’ socioeconomic status, we can understand the reasons behind their thoughts and action more easily.

While I was analyzing the story by myself, I thought the psychological theory would also be a good technique for delving into this story. As the countryman keeps failing to gain entry to law, he gets exhausted, old, and irritated. From the hopeful man who believed the access to the law would take little time and some bribery, he becomes wrinkly and weak, eventually seeing the door permanently closing right in front of him. However, after the discussion in class, I realized that the Marxist criticism is a better approach than the psychological theory. Although the psychological theory helps us to understand the gradual changes in the countryman’s internal state, it is hard to detect that of the gatekeeper. As an educated man that learned to follow the rules only, the gatekeeper cannot express his own feelings about the countryman. The gatekeeper is responsible for being indifferent to everyone at the door, and thus his internal state is forced to be more neutral than that of the countryman. On the other hand, the countryman, who has the sole goal of gaining the entry to law, can freely show his own feelings about the problem. He would do anything in order to achieve this goal and thus gave away his precious belongings for his journey and even ask the fleas on the gatekeeper’s fur for help. As the feelings of the gatekeeper cannot be expressed due to his gatekeeping role, the psychological approach is less efficient to learn about the characters in the story. Therefore, although both the Marxist criticism and the psychological theory helped us to easily detect the characters’ emotion and thoughts, the Marxist criticism allows us to see both perspectives more clearly and objectively.