One can assume that the countryman has a self, if we define self as the attributes and personal identifications one inherits from the society in which we were placed in. He is a “man of the country” this implies at one time, the man being a part of some society, a country of sorts. The man cannot be unique from the influence of the law, as in sitting there for the rest (please recall he was not a babe at the point of attempt to enter the gates of law) of his entire life-he IS being influenced. Is this pessimistic? Or is it just fact that we should except our subject-ness, and in that try to find our own meaning in the world? As the previous chapter explained, we are subject to anything we react to in our world.
I couldn’t help but associate the first paragraph of this story with the DMV, anyone else get that? We know Kafka isn’t talking about a DMV or a social security office, but I think that perhaps, ties can be made. We go about our daily lives, developing personalities and creating relationships that probably unknowingly define our “selves” even more. Individuals are unique, to be sure-but I don’t think that negates their subject hood. We go into the DMV, sit in an uncomfortable chair that any tom dick or harry could have been sitting in before us. We do not socialize, we do not strike up conversation with the person next to us, we do not try to project our individuality (by that I mean, in conversation humans are simply making associations and differentiations to themselves and their beliefs or knowledge-which some people would argue is actually what your “self” is). The treasures that the countryman brings with him could be perceived to be pieces of his selfhood, for our analogy we could say our birth certificate, our SS card-the little “treasures“ that technically and legally make us different from the person in the uncomfortable chair next to us. Only in losing those (I use losing deliberately, because even in rejecting societal indicators, we are being subject to the society from which we want to escape) to the doorkeeper, can we hope to truly lose the “self” that has been imposed on us from birth. However, good luck doing that-we still know who Thoreau was, even though he was on walden pond.
He is trying to reach the intangible. A system is not something you can physically enter, so I’m assuming these gates are not either. In subjecting himself to this omnipotent system, he is shedding the aspects of him that define him as a self in society. Is Kafka-the-bleak, as I like to call him, implying that only in death are we free to ourselves? I still can’t figure out the gate, and it’s pissing me off. By Law, does he mean meaning? Or is to enter the gate to understand the laws of the world? I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think that’s it.
I apologize if this is scatterbrained.