Narrator and point of view

Narrative perspective 

The action in Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial begins abruptly, in medias res. The readers are thrown directly into the action without being able to distance themselves from what is happening, because the narrative perspective does not allow this. However, it is not clearly recognizable who the narrator is. The point of view seems to be that of K., but also K. himself does not narrate. This direct confrontation with the plot continues throughout the novel, and a clearly identifiable narrator never appears in the entire text.

Kafka uses a radical third-person limited narrative perspective. This actually means that a narrator chooses a point of view in the plot, reports only those things that are also accessible to the other characters, and abstains from any commentary. Kafka, however, goes further. He fixes the perspective on Josef K. and binds the reader directly to his point of view.

 At the same time, Kafka completely refrains from telling the events directly from K.'s point of view. The reader can only perceive what Josef K. experiences, sees, and thinks, without K. himself describing this. Furthermore, the entire plot is constructed around the K.. There is no scene in which K. does not appear. This forces the reader to become completely involved with the main character. This technique of focusing an entire text on only one character and their perception can also be called single-sense narration. 

The Trial thus presents the monoperspective typical of Kafka. The main character is totally anchored in the designed world. He cannot look beyond the narrated space. Moreover, there is almost no reflection on other characters and their actions.: Each character has a clear function in the plot structure (apart from the diffuse structures of the court), but this function is only recognizable in the way the character acts and their relation to K.. K. himself does not make any deeper considerations in this regard. Due...