Franz Kafka on the Waiting List

This comes to me from Carl Macmurdo who said that this passage reminds him of the plight of drivers on the waiting list.

(To read the passage click below.)

Before the Law

BEFORE THE LAW stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there

comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the

doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man

then thinks it over and asks if he will be allowed in later. “It is possible,”

says the doorkeeper, “but not at the moment.” Since the gate stands open, as

usual, and the doorkeeper stands to one side, the man stoops to peer through

the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and

says: “ If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take

note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall

to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the

last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to

look at him.” These are difficulties the man from the country had not

expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to

everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat,

with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it

is better to wait until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him

a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days

and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the

doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently has little

interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other

things, but the questions are asked indifferently, as great lords put them, and

always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet. The man, who

has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has,

however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts

everything, but always with the remark: “I am only taking it to keep you

from thinking that you have omitted anything.” During these many years,

the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He

forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole

obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early

years boldly and loudly; later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself.

He becomes childish, and since in his yearlong contemplation of the

doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the

fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeeper’s mind. At length his

eyesight begins to fail, and he does not know whether the world is really

darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in the darkness he is

now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of

the Law. Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his

experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a

question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he

can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low

toward him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to

the man’s disadvantage. “What do you want to know now? “ asks the

doorkeeper; “you are insatiable.” “Everyone strives to reach the Law,” says

the man, “so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but

myself has ever begged for admittance?” The doorkeeper recognizes that the

man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars

in his ear: "“No one else could ever be admitted here, since the gate was

made only for you. I am going to shut it now.”

From The Trial, by Franz Kafka