"Before the Law" Marxist above Formalism

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               The Marxist approach was the most used to understand the text “Before the Law” by Franz Kafka within my group. This would result in considering factors such as possible signs of power, wealth or hierarchy to find a reason to certain acts within the text. However, I would take a formalism and new criticism approach to dig deeper into its’ meaning. The outcome for the different readings is distinct, with a Marxist approach we come to a conclusion that this text is about power while with a formalism approach we create a possible storyline. After considering both approaches, the most reasonable to be used to understand this piece is Marxist for the following reasons; a clear boundary of power is set through details and its’ simplicity gives a greater meaning.

            Briefly my group discussed how the detail imply power shift and a clear line of distinction between the government and its people. As well as a representation of what laws at the moment may be during the time period that this was written in. We considered a variety of approaches but this one seems the most reasonable and easiest to use in order to understand the basic concept of the text.

            Through the formalist approach we can assume a variety of things which is what I did. The overall concept being that it is a representation of borders and the people who aren’t allowed past them. The gate would represent the country and the man of the country would be representing the people from a different country who are not allowed in. I assumed this because by the end we learn that the man should have been allowed through the gate as it was created for him. Meaning that gates are meant for people to use it as an entrance. The old man waits a long time by the gate to be allowed in and this can represent that over a long period of time the law has not changed. Although at first this seemed to quite fit with my reading after learning about the Marxist approach, I understand that I don’t have enough background of the story to understand what is exactly provided to us through the text. Therefore, this story represents the power being contained within this time frame and place.

            From the beginning the gatekeeper receive the power by his description as my group mentioned, he seems to be very sharp in comparison to the “man of the country” which is the only way the old man is described. This would represent the government and who had power within it, the officials and those corresponding to the law and working within it are in charge of the people below. The biggest form of power demonstrated is that the gate keeper made the decision to not let in the old man. The gatekeeper looked down on him and wouldn’t let him go through despite the gate being created for that purpose.

            After discussing these specific details, I changed my mind on which approach would be best, I decided to try to understand the text through the Marxist approach because it gives detail, about the country that the writer potentially talks about. Instead of using Marxist to assume what may be the reason, using Marxist gives you the reasons and perspective on different people. Both people with power and no power are included.

            Overall the class decided that Marxist was a good way to use to understand this story and after realizing this I do too prefer to use it in this case. It gives me a more reassuring basic understanding of what is going on rather then an assumption made through looking for symbols or characterizations within the reading.