'Nobody else but you could ever have obtained admittance. How is it then that in all these years, no one else has ever come here, seeking admittance?' His hearing has failed, so the guard yells into his ear. Says the guard, 'You are insatiable! What is it now?' Says the man, 'Every man strives to attain the law.

And now, before he dies, all he's experienced condenses into one question, a question he's never asked. His sight has dimmed, but in the darkness he perceives a radiance streaming immortally from the door of the law. Growing childish in old age, he begs the fleas to persuade the guard to change his mind and allow him to enter. Everything he has, he gives away in the hope of bribing the guard, who never fails to say to him 'I take what you give me only so that you will not feel that you left something undone.' Keeping his watch during the long years, the man has come to know even the fleas on the guard's fur collar. By the guard's permission, the man sits by the side of the door, and there he waits. From hall to hall, door after door, each guard is more powerful than the last. 'Do not attempt to enter without my permission', says the guard.

He'd been taught that the law was to be accessible to every man.

The man tries to peer through the entrance. May he hope to enter at a later time? That is possible, said the guard. A man comes from the country, begging admittance to the law. Narrator: Before the law, there stands a guard.

Kafka franz the trial