Introduction Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is considered to be one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. One of his novels, Der Process (The Trial), was written in 1914-1915 and first published in 1925 (Brown 487-489); it addresses the theme of law, its agents, and the person’s helplessness against them. In our paper, we will look into this theme by discussing the main features of the trial against the novel’s protagonist. After that, we will proceed to considering some of the possible interpretations of the text, and, finally, we will discuss some parallels between the Kafkaesque law and contemporary American system of judgment. The Features of the Trial in Der Process One of the central themes in The Trial is the theme of bureaucracy, law, and an individual’s utter powerlessness against them. The story itself begins with a sentence, “Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested” ( The Trial 1). The main character is initially convinced that he is “living in a free country”, where everything is “at peace, all laws” are “decent and upheld” ( The Trial 5). Despite that, he finds it impossible to reveal anything even about the nature of the charges however hard he tries. In fact, the whole story is about K.’s attempts to find out anything that would clarify his situation, and trying to legally defend himself against something he cannot understand the essence of. All his efforts only show his helplessness and the inevitability of the punishment for a crime he does not even know anything about. The court he is judged in turns out to be a secret one. The only hearing he is able to attend is located in one of “monotonous, grey constructions, tall blocks of flats occupied by poor people” ( The Trial 27); it is an untidy, cramped building with no air to breathe. The hearing takes place in one of the dirty apartments. Everything K. does only seems to exacerbate his situation. While he is able to deliver an indignant defense speech on the court hearing, this turns out to have no positive effect; vice versa, the judge tells K.: “today, you have robbed yourself of the advantages that a hearing of this sort always gives to someone who is under arrest” ( The Trial 37). Not only K. doesn’t have access to the text of the law according to which he is to be judged; it seems that the people involved in the trial, including high officials, also don’t have it, and could not care less about the fact. On his second visit to the place where the first hearing was held, K. finds out that the books belonging to the examining judge of the case which were supposed to be law books are, in fact, only pornographic works ( The Trial 38-40). It turns out that the law in the novel is completely irrational, arbitrary, and inevitable. A situation which occurs in the bank K. works for serves as evidence for this. Having opened a door in the bank he had never opened before, K. is amazed to find the two wardens who came to his home to arrest him on the very first day of the story being whipped by a third policeman ( The Trial 62). The wardens tell him that, had it been not for his speech during the hearing, they would not have been punished (regardless of their guilt); and that they will be punished every day in the future only due to his speech in which he accused them of bribery. The whipping man says that the “punishment is both just and