How does the relationship between the “judge” and the “prisoner” resemble those of authority figures in Kafka’s other works?
The relationship between “judge” and “prisoner” in Kafka’s works reveals a structural paradox of authority: power is both absolute and invisible, arbitrary and inevitable. This dynamic manifests in similar ways in figures such as the court in The Trial, the officials in the Castle, and the officer in the Penal Colony. Here are the key similarities:
- The Metaphysical Ambiguity of Authority
The Being of Judges in the “Darkness Below” (The Trial): Josef K.’s judges hide in attics and dingy offices. This parallels the invisible officials of the Castle (Klamm) and the sacred shadow of the dead commandant in the Penal Colony.
→ Kafka’s authority is either very distant (The Castle) or very close but unrecognizable (the judge in the painting in The Trial).
The Lacanian “Other”: These figures symbolize an authority that can never be fully represented. The prisoner (Josef K., K., a soldier in the Penal Colony) can never know the Other’s desire.
- The Ontological Nature of Crime: “Existence is a Crime”
Defenseless Prisoners:
In The Trial, Josef K. is executed before he can learn of his crime.
The prisoner in the Penal Colony is mute (literally, unable to speak).
In The Castle, K. comes to the village claiming to be a “land surveyor,” but this appointment is never confirmed.
→ All demonstrate that crime is independent of the subject: Authority exists to produce crime.
The Freudian Superego: Judges function as an internalized father figure (a shadow of Hermann Kafka). Guilt is something preexisting.
- The Sacred Absurdity of Bureaucracy
The Dysfunction of Judges and Officials:
The court in The Trial is busy rummaging through files.
The authorities in the Castle send meaningless documents.
The officer in the Penal Colony worships a machine that no longer functions.
→ Kafka’s bureaucracy is a grotesque caricature of Max Weber’s “iron cage”: means (machine, documents) replace ends.
- The Bodily Violence of Power
The machine in the Penal Colony consumes the bodies of the judge (officer) and the prisoner simultaneously.
In The Trial, Josef K. is murdered with a butcher knife (civil violence).
In The Castle, K. is subjected to Klamm’s invisible violence in his relationship with Frieda.
→ Authority either destroys bodies or integrates them into its own apparatus (bureaucracy, sexuality).
- The Dialectic of the Judge-Prisoner Relationship
In the Penal Colony, the officer ultimately sacrifices himself to the machine.
The lawyers in The Trial (like Huld) are part of the system to which they are condemned.
In The Castle, the authorities (Barnabas) are enslaved messengers.
→ In Kafka, power is also condemned: the system swallows its own executioners.
Kafka’s Theology of Authority
Kafka’s judge-prisoner relationship reveals three fundamental contradictions of modern power:
Possessing absolute power without being visible,
Institutionalizing meaninglessness while claiming to produce meaning,
Making its victims internalize their own condemnation.
These figures demonstrate that all forms of authority (the state, the father, God) are a kind of “Kafkaesque labyrinth.” Kafka’s message is:
“The judge is also a prisoner—only of the laws no one has written.”
