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"Someone must have been telling
lies about Josef K.

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He knew he had done nothing wrong,
but one morning, he was arrested."

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Thus begins "The Trial,"

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one of author Franz Kafka's
most well-known novels.

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K, the protagonist, 
is arrested out of nowhere

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and made to go through
a bewildering process

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where neither the cause of his arrest,

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nor the nature 
of the judicial proceedings

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are made clear to him.

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This sort of scenario is considered
so characteristic of Kafka's work

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that scholars came up 
with a new word for it.

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Kafkaesque has entered the vernacular
to describe unnecessarily complicated

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and frustrating experiences,

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like being forced to navigate labyrinths
of bureaucracy.

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But does standing in a long line
to fill out confusing paperwork

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really capture the richness 
of Kafka's vision?

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Beyond the word's casual use,
what makes something Kafkaesque?

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Franz Kafka's stories do indeed deal
with many mundane and absurd aspects

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of modern bureaucracy,

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drawn in part from his experience
of working as an insurance clerk

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in early 20th century Prague.

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Many of his protagonists 
are office workers

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compelled to struggle through
a web of obstacles

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in order to achieve their goals,

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and often the whole ordeal turns out
to be so disorienting and illogical

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that success becomes pointless
in the first place.

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For example, in the short story, 
"Poseidon,"

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the Ancient Greek god is an executive
so swamped with paperwork

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that he's never had time to explore
his underwater domain.

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The joke here is that not even
a god can handle the amount of paperwork

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demanded by the modern workplace.

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But the reason why is telling.

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He's unwilling to delegate any of the work

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because he deems everyone else 
unworthy of the task.

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Kafka's Poseidon is a prisoner
of his own ego.

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This simple story contains 
all of the elements

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that make for a truly Kafkaesque scenario.

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It's not the absurdity 
of bureaucracy alone,

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but the irony of the character's 
circular reasoning in reaction to it

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that is emblematic of Kafka's writing.

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His tragicomic stories act as a form of
mythology for the modern industrial age,

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employing dream logic to explore
the relationships

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between systems of arbitrary power
and the individuals caught up in them.

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Take, for example, Kafka's 
most famous story, "Metamorphosis."

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When Gregor Samsa awaken's one morning
to find himself transformed

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into a giant insect,

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his greatest worry 
is that he gets to work on time.

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Of course, this proves impossible.

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It was not only the authoritarian realm
of the workplace that inspired Kafka.

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Some of his protagonists' struggles
come from within.

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The short story, "A Hunger Artist,"

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describes a circus performer whose act
consists of extended fasts.

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He's upset that the circus master
limits these to 40 days,

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believing this prevents him from achieving
greatness in his art.

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But when his act loses popularity,

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he is left free 
to starve himself to death.

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The twist comes when he lays dying
in anonymity,

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regretfully admitting that his art
has always been a fraud.

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He fasted not through strength of will,

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but simply because he never found
a food he liked.

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Even in "The Trial,"

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which seems to focus 
directly on bureaucracy,

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the vague laws and bewildering procedures
point to something far more sinister:

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the terrible momentum of the legal system
proves unstoppable,

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even by supposedly powerful officials.

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This is a system 
that doesn't serve justice,

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but whose sole function 
is to perpetuate itself.

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What political theorist Hannah Arendt,

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writing years after Kafka's death,

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would call "tyranny without a tyrant."

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Yet accompanying 
the bleakness of Kafka's stories,

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there's a great deal of humor

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rooted in the nonsensical logic
of the situations described.

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So on the one hand, it's easy to recognize
the Kafkaesque in today's world.

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We rely on increasingly convoluted systems
of administration

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that have real consequences on
every aspect of our lives.

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And we find our every word judged
by people we can't see

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according to rules we don't know.

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On the other hand, by fine-tuning
our attention to the absurd,

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Kafka also reflects our shortcomings
back at ourselves.

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In doing so, he reminds us that the world
we live in is one we create,

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and have the power 
to change for the better.