It is important to note that Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is a small piece of his larger, yet unfinished, novel The Trial. The importance of this lies in the fact that Kafka’s novel goes more in depth about a man’s struggle against the Law and an even more ominous figure, called the Court. As a whole work Kafka’s ideals are much more expansive and menacing, but his shorter parable does in fact teach a strong lesson in spite of the novel as a whole. His parable, layered with ideas of philosophy, fragility of humanity, and the innate sense of trust that comes with authority, teaches overall that the encompassing power of societal ideas eventually lead to a corruption of human nature. In the Kafka’s The Trial the “Before the Law” parable is told to the main protagonist of the story as a way to dissuade him from gaining any higher knowledge of a large, corrupt system. The parable is about a man trying to persuade a gatekeeper to allow him entrance through a gate to see the law. In the parable “Everyone strives after the law”, and the way the man waits and begs the gatekeeper is reflective on the society he hails from (Kafka, 24). It is apparent that the law is an all-powerful force in society, so revered that to keep others away “from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other” (Kafka, 23). The plight of the man, and the unrest of society to strive towards the law is what gives it power. It is not touched on what the law is in the world of the parable, but that knowledge is not needed because the idea of power has been beaten into our heads so often that we have lost the ability to ask those questions. Questioning the law, and in turn its subordinates (i.e. the gatekeeper) is in the realm of the man, but he only asks to gain entrance to the law, nothing else. The man doesn’t even entertain the idea of going against the law, he accepts his fate, and eventually dies waiting to gain entra