Kafka's 'Before the Law' parable - how do you interpret it?

Cafe Society
1

How do you interpret the parable? Here’s a link to the passage.

I’ve read ‘Before the Law’ multiple times (for classes and just to read it), but I always feel at a loss trying to interpret it. I suppose it may just be part of reading Kafka, but I feel almost…insecure when it comes to trying to make sense of the parable. I have guesses, but I have little confidence in them.

Of course, there is no one answer, but I’m really curious to see what you guys think of it. What does it mean that each person has his own gate(s)? Is the Law wholly inaccessable to certain people (the poor, the uneducated, the powerless), or must everyone exert force and effort to gain access? Can other people access the Law? What would make them worthy? The Law becomes more and more inaccessable the deeper one goes; is this a natural characteristic or one imposed by human government? Is this a criticism of human law, or an admission of reality - that is, should the Law be transparent or opaque?

ftr, I see the Law as human law, and the man from the country is denied access because he lacks power (just as K is denied access). Law becomes more and more impenetrable because such opacity ensures that only a few people will be able to access it, and these are the people with the power to create and enforce the Law. While it is a critique, I don’t perceive that Kafka offers any alternatives.

2

I see the man constrained by the law. His own law of nativity and conscience that restricts or guides his action. His entrance was barred by the mores of the law, his law; not the gatekeeper. Ultimately, in irony, it is the law which forbids its own entrance. We live within its confines and of course the law must be followed. It protects, but who protects the law but the abiding?
Kafka surely did penetrate sharply the absurdities within our constructs! He’s almost like Douglas Adams on a bad trip!

3

I thought the parable was fundamentally meaningless; it sounds like something that is deeply profound, but there’s really nothing there. And that’s of a piece with the rest of the justice system in “The Trial” - the entire thing is deeply absurd, from K’s initial arrest to his execution, but K is the only one who sees it as such. (And over the course of the novel, he loses that perception himself). The parable tells us something about the prison chaplain and his colleagues, but nothing much about the law.