The Role of Justice in Kafka's The Trial
             and Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles
             Justice is distant, elusive, and sometimes all together absent in both Franz Kafka's The Trial and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Both of the protagonists are essentially put on trial in their novel, metaphorically and literally. Justice is represented in the novels by a multitude of forms ranging from God and nature in Tess to the Judges that preside in Kafka's darkened attics.
             Hardy ends Tess of the d'Urbervilles with: " 'Justice' was done and the President of the Immortals...had ended his sport with Tess."(Hardy, p 403) This statement is wrought with irony due to the utter injustice of the heroine's death. The President of the Immortals can be interpreted as God who toys with the lives of the mortals. Hardy's view of God's justice is a harsh one. The divine is seen as a Roman-like deity who governs his subjects lives without compassion. It is also clear that this is a parody of God's justice, that he does not truly exist. Through Tess of the d'Urbervilles the characters discuss their disbelief in not just a benevolent God but any God. That disbelief makes the statement even more ironic because this nonexistent God's doctrine and social laws are the standards of 'justice.' It is the uncompromising Judeo-Christian values that in effect killed Tess.
             Life's, God's, or the President of the Immortal's sport with Tess was all the pain and suffering that her existence brought on her. The Sport was the misreading of each others character and the perception of illusion instead of truth. The sport began with Tess' father's misinterpretation of their newfound noble last name and ending with Tess hung for murder.
             In Kafka's The Trial the protagonist K. is similarly 'toyed' with. His ...