The Understandings of Suffering from Alienation as Reflected in Franz Kafka’s Before the Law

Abstrak

The widening aspects of literary criticism have brought in insights of cultural studies. One main idea of that discipline is about social alienation in society. Raoul Vaneigem emphasizes how individuals may be trapped in social alienation due to conscious constrains that shapes such despair to the condition of disorder. People tend to experience suffering as they could not move forward by not understanding the obstacles, even thinking about those is reflection of alienation in the process. Before the Law is one interesting short story written by Franz Kafka that tells a person who seeks knowledge but being restrained by the guardian or gatekeeper of the law. This story is full of parables that its meanings are not easily grasped through usual concepts. Then, the question is; how is suffering from
alienation be reflected in Franz Kafka’s Before the Law? By using qualitative method, cultural concepts are used to explain the correlations between Kafka’s story and Vaneigem’s perspectives. The man in the story experiences such alienation from the gatekeeper as he suffers inability to enter and meet the law. He is enslaved by the language of the gatekeeper. The guardian’s language is impenetrable by him. His meanings are out of sense beside merely left with anxiety of being secluded. He seems to have right but he is not rightful at all. In conclusion, the story of Kafka’s matches with Vaneigem’s perspective. The man who would like to enter the gate is familiar to the law but is foreign to the language of gatekeeper. His relations to others are unknown unless being alienated socially and
individually.