Kafka's 'Advocates' And Existence Amongst Others

Franz Kafka's Advocates is another short prose-piece. Avoiding the many claims to have found a 'code' to Kafka, all equally compelling claims (and there is the problem to the pointless activity), to therefore read his writing plain -

There is a theme that runs across many of Kafka's stories isn't there? The bare bones of existence? When he's not dealing with the bare bones of a solitary existence, he frequently deals with the bare bones of having to live amongst others (guilt, charity, safety) doesn't he? 

Kafka's Advocates, a tiny piece of writing, sits right there within this second seam. It (partly) deals with the need to look around you and to find advocates in the literal German-language sense of 'those who speak on your behalf'.

The stripped down bare bones of having to live amongst others; and one of these 'bones' is the need for having people on your side. Kafka's narrator points out that an advocate is needed everywhere. If anything, less in court than elsewhere for a court, one assumes, passes judgement according to the law. But outside of court, where colleagues, acquaintances, friends, might be called on at any time to give evidence on your behalf, Oh how much more of a need is there to gather round you people who always speak for you! 

The narrator is searching for advocates everywhere and yet he can't rid himself of the feeling that he is not 'in the right place'. He points to the benefit of being in a large crowd, and a varied crowd. There are benefits to knowing people from a class higher, or lower, than your own, professional people, folk of all ages, and for this future need for advocacy there are benefits to being able to find people who are able, who are kind, and who are keeping an eye out for you.

As the narrator points out - a fairground would be good; anyway certainly not these corridors that he is haunting, corridors everywhere, narrow, vaulted, turning in gradual curves with high sparsely decorated doors, and where people did not look like advocates:  '. . . most people who came toward me and whom I kept meeting in the corridors looked like fat old women; they had huge blue-and-white striped aprons covering their entire bodies, kept stroking their stomachs and swaying awkwardly to and fro.'

Of course any admission of being on the wrong track is unbearable to him, and so only forward motion is acceptable, only a perpetual climbing up of another floor of these unsuitable corridors within this endless building.