The Kafkaesque at work in Evangelion

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The Kafkaesque at work in Evangelion

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Postby LeoXiao » Sun Jul 08, 2012 1:05 am

Kafka's novel Der Prozess (the Trial) tells the story of a man facing a charge for a crime he has neither committed nor has access to any information about. He meanders through a myriad of legal formalities and various characters in the attempt to resolve his case, but to no avail. Eventually the protagonist, referred to as "K.", is taken away by agents of the court to a quarry, and executed, seemingly resigned to his fate.

In the second-to-last chapter of Der Prozess, K. is led to a cathedral, where he encounters a priest, who, as it turns out, serves the court system and knows of K.'s case. This priest berates K. for seeking too much external help (esp. from women), and explains that he has deluded himself in the court. In elaboration, he recites the parable Vor dem Gesetz (Before the Law), which he introduces as "a delusion mentioned in the opening texts of the law". K. and the priest then debate the meaning of the parable, the story told in which seems to parallel K.'s own plight.

SPOILER: Show
In the parable, Vor dem Gesetz, a man from the country seeks the law and wishes to gain entry to the law through a doorway. The doorkeeper tells the man that he cannot go through at the present time. The man asks if he can ever go through, and the doorkeeper says that it is possible. The man waits by the door for years, bribing the doorkeeper with everything he has. The doorkeeper accepts the bribes, but tells the man that he accepts them "so that you do not think you have failed to do anything." The man waits at the door into old age. Right before his death, he asks the doorkeeper why even though everyone seeks the law, no one else has come in all the years. The doorkeeper answers "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it."


In the end, K. gives up the discussion despite holding disagreement with the priest because he is too tired and regards the story as something to be left to court officials to analyze. He asks to be shown the exit, and the priest, who had spoken with him amiably for the whole chapter, suddenly acts cold and distant. At this, K. inquires about this odd behavior, which leads to the following conclusion to the chapter, which, as will be recalled is in turn followed by the final scene of K.'s death. The text:

SPOILER: Show
"'Please, wait!'
'I'm waiting,' said the priest.
'Is there anything else you want from me?' asked K.
'No,' said the priest.
'You were so friendly to me earlier on,' said K., 'and you explained everything, but now you abandon me as if I were nothing to you.'
'You have to go,' said the priest.
'Well, yes,' said K., 'you need to understand that.'
'First, you need to understand who I am,' said the priest.
'You're the prison chaplain,' said K., and went closer to the priest, it was not so important for him to go straight back to the bank as he had made out, he could very well stay where he was.
'So that means I belong to the court,' said the priest. 'So why would I want anything from you? the court doesn't want anything from you. It accepts you when you come and it lets you go when you leave.'"


This exchange between the amiable priest and K. mirrors Shinji's brief but monumental encounter with Kaworu. Already from the positions of the relevant figures there are parallels. In der Prozess, the protagonist K. is at his wit's end, having spent no small amount of his time and energy on trying to resolve the problem of his trial, to no avail. In Evangelion, Shinji is in a comparable state, having essentially repeated the same mission (kill Angels) for the last 23 episodes, with no improvement in his life and especially in his interpersonal relationships, despite the obedient fulfillment of his duty as a Pilot. On the other side, in Kafka's novel we have the priest, who speaks kindly and directly to K. (unlike other servants of the law, who are brusque and wooden) and wins his trust, and in Evangelion there is Kaworu, who befriends Shinji to the point that love can be spoken of.

It is clear to see that the priest and Kaworu serve as savior figures, and in both cases, the parting moment between the savior and saved is a difficult one for the latter but not the former. In der Prozess the priest declares his own behavior to be tied to the nature of the court, and thus lets K. go without any emotion or "wanting anything from him". In Evengelion, Kaworu, while not acting indifferent to Shinji, carries out a similar act of abandonment with the request for his death.

Going deeper, we see that much of what the priest describes in his warning against "self-delusion" also applies to Shinji, and that Kaworu's mannerisms that make him attractive to Shinji are also present in the priest. Before his recitation of the parable, the priest tells K. that he relies too much on "external help", "women", and that he "deludes himself in the court". These admonishments can be easily applied to Shinji: he doesn't have much of a personality besides following orders, he has severe gender-based or at least gender-aggravated problems with the three female leads, and he is servile to the whims of the NERV (and his father's) bureaucracy.

We have in the parable Vor dem Gesetz what I hold to be an unfettered glimpse into the core idea of Kafka's work, or at least the main idea of der Prozess. Basically, the problem described is a lack of self-agency, or the folly of trying to find a solution or "Law" for life. Even from the beginning of the story, it does not say "the man comes to enter the Law", rather, it says that the man asks to be let in, and indeed by the doorkeeper. Regarding this more broadly, it is the description of wanting something to be done for you rather than doing it yourself, i.e. an escapist process. Seeking "the Law" behind a series of gates and doorkeepers, if we mean "the Law" to mean something like a prescription for living, is fruitless.

Shinji seems to fall into the same trap as K. and the man from the countryside; constantly seeking support from others, which all turns out to be empty in the end. Throughout EoTV, a kind of "stationary setting" persists for most of the time; the setting is always the same city, with the same routines of killing angels, the same characters with little actual development, at least not in the conventional sense. Upon consideration, not just Shinji but most of the other characters can be seen to have the same lack of agency due to pursuit of what they see to be ideal realities, but which are unattainable; these range from the seemingly ambitious and self-determinate Asuka, who doesn't account for her inner weaknesses until it is too late, to Ritsuko, who follows her boss and lover loyally despite probably having the intellect to know the unwiseness thereof, to Rei, whose plight is impossibly simple: she sees no reason to live yet continues to do so.

It is an irony that the one character who possibly has the right idea about everything, that people can create Heaven or Hell based on their own hearts, is the late Yui. She too is the savior figure for Gendo, who perhaps out of all the cast goes to the most exorbitant length to keep her.

My laptop is out of batteries and I can't retrieve the power cable without waking up people who are sleeping. I'll conclude this OP here with the observation that:
- the novel der Prozess was never finished. There was argubly some stuff missing in the second half of the book, but the ending and the cathedral scene described above are intact.
- a similar thing happened to EoTV where we had episode 24 and then an abrupt and anticlimatic ending to the series, perhaps due to budget issues.

I'll have more thoughts later, hopefully.

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Postby Monk Ed » Sun Jul 08, 2012 1:51 am

LeoXiao wrote:and he is servile to the whims of the NERV (and his father's) bureaucracy.

Wha? Shinji was pretty defiant several times. Episodes 1, 4, 10, 18, and 19 all come to mind. Shinji at first refused to join the whole shebang, in 1. In 4 and 19, he left Nerv (however temporarily). In 18, he was actively defiant. Furthermore, and ironically, though, these were all portrayed as bad things, as "running away". (Except for ep 18.)
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Postby LeoXiao » Mon Jul 09, 2012 12:28 am

View Original PostMonk Ed wrote:Wha? Shinji was pretty defiant several times. Episodes 1, 4, 10, 18, and 19 all come to mind. Shinji at first refused to join the whole shebang, in 1. In 4 and 19, he left Nerv (however temporarily). In 18, he was actively defiant. Furthermore, and ironically, though, these were all portrayed as bad things, as "running away". (Except for ep 18.)


This is true, but:
What good did it do to his person or mental state? In which case was he actually able to break free of NERV? He encountered the paradox in which there was no way of escaping NERV; either he had to follow it or he had to try to resist it. The former is evidenced by his normal obedience; the latter by his occasional outbursts of insubordination. In any case, there was no instance in which he really broke free of NERV or its agents (defined loosely, this pretty much includes everyone in the cast). Not that this is surprising, how could Shinji not care about something as major as having to pilot an Eva and defend humanity? Bringing things back to Kafka and der Prozess, how could K. not care about the court's prosecution of him, even if he knew it to be fully groundless?

Therein lies the idea of servitude, the state in which Shinji finds himself in relation to NERV. As is implied above and by Yui's idea of heaven and hell, the only way to truly escape is to not care and just take it as a normal part of life, but such an escape is incredibly difficult. However, it is at this notion of escape where Anno and Kafka really differ IMO.

In Evangelion, Shinji does begin to wake up to the realization that he could still be happy despite not being free or blissful; there is some hope. In Kafka's stories, the protagonist is nearly always a tragic mess at the end with no hope left. The dramatic process of development which I described in the OP, however, is similar with both authors.

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Postby Monk Ed » Mon Jul 09, 2012 2:05 am

I'm confused by the characterization of Shinji as "servile" when he clearly was not. He did not just meekly obey his father's words, in fact they were the words he most often defied. I have not read Der Prozess but given the parallel you drew, it implied to me that the priest was criticizing "K" for being "deluded" in the idea that the court would do what was right for him and therefore he never stood up for himself. Or something like that. Was my impression wrong? In what way was K. "deluded" according to that priest? (And are we sure that the priest is a reliable characterizer?)
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Postby Ryjin » Mon Jul 09, 2012 1:29 pm

Interesting read and interpretation. While I don't think Anno had Der Prozess in mind when he was trolling poor Shinji with with the whole Kaworu thing, I would wager a bet that Kafka's works and ideas were at lest rattling around somewhere in his head and playing an subconscious part in some of his choices.

But either way, this idea get's Kefka's seal of approval!
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Postby Monk Ed » Mon Jul 09, 2012 3:26 pm

That is so Kefkaesque!
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Postby Ryjin » Mon Jul 09, 2012 7:18 pm

View Original PostMonk Ed wrote:That is so Kefkaesque!


Ra-ho-ho-hoooooo!

True fact: Every time I read up on the real the Kefka or his works I imagine him looking just like 16-bit Kefka just sitting there at his 16-bit desk writing down some new philosophical work on the hell that others make.
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Postby Justacrazyguy » Tue Jul 10, 2012 5:13 am

There is a critical diference betwen K and Shinji wich is the fact that Shinji runing away is bad but in K´s case it is seen as breaking free from the law.

It is true that wath leads to their failures in the end was giving up but Shinji needed to face is situation, K was accused of nothing and yet, giving up lead to is death, the only reason he held for so long was is pride.
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Postby LeoXiao » Tue Jul 10, 2012 11:24 pm

View Original PostMonk Ed wrote:I'm confused by the characterization of Shinji as "servile" when he clearly was not. He did not just meekly obey his father's words, in fact they were the words he most often defied. I have not read Der Prozess but given the parallel you drew, it implied to me that the priest was criticizing "K" for being "deluded" in the idea that the court would do what was right for him and therefore he never stood up for himself. Or something like that. Was my impression wrong? In what way was K. "deluded" according to that priest? (And are we sure that the priest is a reliable characterizer?)


"Servile" is not really the word I should've used. When I wrote the OP I sort of put his incidents of insubordination into the back of my head, when I what I really meant was that he was never able to escape the influence of NERV and his father:

Shinji was pretty docile for most of the time, thinking that if he just followed orders that people would be pleased with him and that he would be happy. It was when he really felt anguish, that he exploded and lashed out. Yet his anger was still directed at NERV and Gendo, and in each case was futile, as opposed to a use of his power to become truly independent. After Unit 01 is forced to destroy Unit 04, Shinji tries to threaten Gendo and the NERV HQ, but is subdued since Gendo controls the life support system, showing that rebellion had already been taken into account. Shinji's defiance thus was effectively exercised on NERV's terms, and ended up being no better for him than being "servile".

In a nutshell, whether Shinji was defiant or obedient is inconsequential to his nevertheless being subordinated to NERV.

K. likewise imagined that since he was obviously innocent, just dealing with the court and its agents normally would be okay. When solving the case turned out to be trickier than expected, he becomes more active, seeking out lawyers and information about the court's workings to emancipate himself from his mess. Similar to Shinji's problem described above, however, there is no way K. can win this game. The furthest he is able to get is to the priest, who yet still ends up as a cold agent of the court, leaving K. alone to his fate.

The priest is presented as an agent of the court, albeit a friendly one. As to whether or not his judgement of K.'s behavior is correct, it is indeed a a subjective interpretation. But, the fact that it was chosen by Kafka to appear at what ended up being the novel's climatic moment is probably significant, especially since the priest was also the one who recited the story "Before the Law" to K. , the parable that echoed his own situation perfectly, and that there are strong parallels between the priest and the doorkeeper mentioned in the story.



- In Evangelion, Shinji seeks comfort at the hands of NERV (and his father, Asuka, Misato, etc), but ends up being depressed to the point of not knowing whether or not he wants to live by the time Instrumentality happens.
- In Der Prozess, K. seeks acquittal from his case through the help of the court, but ends up being unable to actually get anywhere within its bureaucratic mess and is eventually executed anyway.
-- In tandem to Der Prozess, in Before the Law the "Man from the Country" wants the doorkeeper to let him into the law, yet because of the doorkeeper's (ultimately paradoxical) prohibition cannot gain entry and dies before the gate.
In all this, there is the common "protagonist>vehicle>goal" structure, whereby the "vehicle" to the "goal" is a trap, yet so intimidating or appealing that it cannot be ignored. Therein lies the Kafkaesque.

There are some differences to be noted however. In Evangelion, there was nothing all that inherently bad about Shinji piloting Eva 01, in fact, killing the Angels was needed for humanity to survive. The main issue was his attitude towards everything, towards his dad, towards everyone, that turned his situation into something comparable to K.'s, but it at least had a measure of obvious hope. K.'s situation was a good deal more desperate. It would have been much more inconceivable for him to simply take a "positive attitude" towards the charges, however false or nonexistent they may have been, placed upon him by the court. At the end, it seemed like his execution was inevitable, and perhaps that was the way Kafka meant it.

Taking the above to be correct, perhaps Kafka was making a critique of society's working through his depiction of an individual hopelessly victimized by the bureaucratic machine, whilst Anno made a story of an individual who had put himself in a similar state, or at least had the possibly of escape (by his own hand) from such a state, whereas the only way K. could've been rescued is through the court realizing its folly, thus pardoning him unilaterally.

There is a critical diference betwen K and Shinji wich is the fact that Shinji runing away is bad but in K´s case it is seen as breaking free from the law.

It is true that what leads to their failures in the end was giving up but Shinji needed to face is situation, K was accused of nothing and yet, giving up lead to is death, the only reason he held for so long was is pride.


Well, "running away" can be defined loosely. In Evangelion, the meaning is apparently clear: Shinji had the choice not to pilot Eva 01.

In K.'s case, how could he run away other than in a mental sense, i.e. accepting his fate? Would that even be running away anymore? Moreover, the fact that he trusted in the court (which is different than the "law"), in the lawyers, in women, and finally the priest, that is also an example of "running away" and searching for a defined vehicle through which he could attain a result, or "the law".

Going back to Shinji, as indicated in the first post (I think), he was actually always running away by putting his trust into NERV and his father, instead of himself or his own inherent worth as an individual, as his mother had suggested was possible of people in general with her statement on heaven and hell.

So I think the situations he and K. found themselves in is pretty comparable in that regard.

Interesting read and interpretation. While I don't think Anno had Der Prozess in mind when he was trolling poor Shinji with with the whole Kaworu thing, I would wager a bet that Kafka's works and ideas were at lest rattling around somewhere in his head and playing an subconscious part in some of his choices.

It's possible. It's also possible that Anno never read any Kafka. But that just makes the parallels that much more interesting to think about.

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Postby Monk Ed » Wed Jul 11, 2012 12:00 am

Why is Nerv the parallel to the court? Isn't reality the parallel to the court? That's what Shinji kept trying to run away from but could never escape except through death. Or, if not reality, then the reality of human social interaction. Something more metaphorical like that seems appropriate. Shinji's main problem was not with any particular organization.
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"That sounds like the kind of science that makes absolutely 0 sense when you stop and think about it... I LOVE IT." -- Rosenakahara


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