It is possible to do this? https://www.mediafire.com/file/5cccdcfxe5xtgzb/Before_the_Law_by_Franz_Kafka__.pdf/file https://www.mediafire.com/file/u98qx6jhmqj4iy1/Law_And_Anthropology-_A_reader_by_Sall

by Franz Kafka

Translation by Ian Johnston

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who

asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the

moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is

possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” At the moment the gate to the law stands open, as

always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in order to see through the

gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so

much, try it in spite of my prohibition. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the most

lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other.

I can’t endur e even one glimpse of the third.” The man from the country has not expected such

difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks

more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and hi s long, thin, black

Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The

gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he

sits for days and years. He makes m any attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out

with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his

homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and

at the en d he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has

equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable,

to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.” During the many years the man

observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this one

seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the unlucky circumstance, in the

first years thoughtlessly and out loud, later, as he grows old, he still mumbles to himself. He

becomes childish and, since in the long years studying the gatekeeper he has come to know the

fleas in his fur collar, he even asks the fl eas to help him persuade the gatekeeper. Finally his

eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or

whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an

illumination which breaks inex tinguishably out of the gateway to the law. Now he no longer has

much time to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his experiences of the entire time up

into one question which he has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he ca n no

longer lift up his stiffening body.

The gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the great difference has changed things

to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you still want to know, then?” asks the gatekeeper.

“You are insatiable.” “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so h ow is that in these

many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already

dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else

can gain entry, since this entrance was ass igned only to you. I’m going now to close it.