from that experience merely provides them with the necessary tools to face a more difficult situation. This continues on until they are finally able to cope with difficulties that they initially never would have been able to. Unfortunately the man accepts the stool that the doorkeeper offers him where “he sits for days and years.” The man never gains any sort of stature, for he looses out on all of the potential growth he could have gained by standing up to the doorkeeper. Before the man knows he has reached a state where he is looked down upon, and questions asked of him “are put indifferent, as great lords put them.” Unaware of the hole he has dug for himself, the man eventually loses total sight of his original goal of reaching ‘the law’, and “the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper.” He even reaches the point of begging the fleas in the doorkeeper’s coat to grant him access to ‘The Law’ If only the man would have realized from the beginning that the gate was placed there for his own personal self-development. The lessons he could have learnt by pushing beyond the initial doorkeeper would have built him into a totally new person, with unique talents and insights gained from his experience. Instead he grows old and never achieves his aspiration, and the doorkeeper finally points out, that “no one else could be admitted here, since the gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”The lesson learnt from the man in Franz Kafka’s parable Before the Law, bears an important lesson about the life one leads. One must be prepared to face the trials that life present. If one is able to overcome their challenges, they will grow from their experience and form their own unique personality. If one cannot overcome their obstacles, they may spend their entire life stuck in a rut of complacency, never achieving any goals or dreams...
