ABSTRACT
Kafka's tragic heroes reflect their author in innumerable ways, among them increasing age and mellowness. The Trial is the strongest product of Kafka's father period, a novel of bachelorhood, the city, masochism. Its sadism, uniforms, stalking terror, mass obedience, drumhead courts are representative of the era of expanding, exploding militarism. Although The Castle is generally considered to be Kafka's best novel, many readers prefer The Trial for its greater drama and economy, qualities that are in striking evidence when the novel is compared with the loose, picaresque Amerika. The dynamics of the novel are the dynamics of the interplay of its symbols. Kafka is a purifying force in the modern novel. He returns to primal effects, making his novel carry meanings by symbols rather than by the accretion of sociology, psychology, music, and all the other impedimenta of realism.
