Kafka, Jones, and Michelangelo: From Adam to Josef K.

In Kafka’s parable “Vor dem Gesetz” (Before the law), a gate leads from a space of ordinary appearances to a very different domain referred to as the law. Concrete details are thus juxtaposed with an elusive abstraction. Though woven into the narratives, such transitional structures and labyrinthine environments give Kafka’s texts an enigmatic quality that has invited numerous interpretations as political, existential, and religious allegories. This article considers how film adaptations by Orson Welles and David Jones assimilate these spatial tropes, thereby revealing the discursive agenda for each production.