Franz Kafka's Before The Law

Franz Kafka: “Before the law”

“Before the law” is a short story in which the reader at first would think it’s a battle between man and door keeper, to gain admittance to the Law. As the reader goes deeper into the writing they discover that this is a battle between man and his fear. The man from the country must figure out how to overcome his fear of the Law before he may gain admittance to the Law. In “Before the law” Franz Kafka demonstrates how conflict, tone, and setting drives a man to his last breath to try and overcome his fear and gain admittance to the Law.

In “Before the law” the man from the country must realize his conflict between himself and his fear of the Law before gaining admittance from the doorkeeper. The man from the country shows fear many times throughout the story. The doorkeeper informs the man “I am powerful. And I am only the least of the …show more content…
There is a doorkeeper who is in charge of this gate that the man from the country must go through in order to get admittance to the Law. At one point in the story the man after being denied acceptance into the law stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. After looking in the man realizes that there are hallways upon hallways and with these hallways many doorkeepers are standing by to guard. The man in fear of the law decides to wait outside the gates where the first doorkeeper has given him a stool to sit on while he waits. The man from the country grows old waiting outside the gates of the law making it harder to see anything past the first gate into the Law. The man being outside the gates forgets at one point that there are hallways upon hallways of doorkeepers waiting for him and focuses all his attention on just getting thru the first gate into the Law. The man losing time and energy starts to see nothing but darkness and his fear of the law keeps him from gaining admittance into the