Before the law (Parable from Kafka’s novel “The Process”)

Before the law is the gatekeeper. A man from the village approaches this gatekeeper and asks for permission to enter the law. But the gatekeeper says that now he cannot allow him to enter. The person thinks and asks later if he can then enter later. “Well, it is possible,” the gatekeeper answers, “but not now.” As the gate leading to the law is opened, as always, and the gatekeeper moves aside, the man bends down to look in through the gate. When the gatekeeper notices this, he laughs and says: “If it attracts you so much, then try to enter there despite my prohibition. But remember: I am omnipotent. And I am only the lowest gatekeeper. From the hall to the hall there are further gatekeepers one more powerful than the other. Even in the face of the third, I even get lost. ”
The man from the village did not expect such difficulties; After all, the law should be accessible to everyone and always, he thinks, but when he is now looking more closely at the gatekeeper in a fur coat, his large pointed nose, his long, thin, black Tatar beard, he decides to wait anyway
until you get permission to enter. The doorman sets a stool for him and tells him to sit away from the door.
There he sits days and years. He makes many attempts to get permission to enter and tires the gatekeeper with his requests. The gatekeeper often arranges for him little questions, asks him about his homeland and a lot more about it, but these are all indifferent questions from those asked by possessive persons, and in the end he tells him again and again that he cannot yet let him in. The man who took a lot of things on the road, uses everything, even the most valuable, to bribe the gatekeeper. Although he accepts everything, he says: “I take it only because you don’t think that you don’t have time”.
During these long years, a man almost continuously monitors the gatekeeper. He forgets the other gatekeepers and only this first seems to him the only obstacle to the law. He curses such an unfortunate set of circumstances, in the first years, unceremoniously and loudly, later, when he gets old, he only grumbles under his breath. He falls into childishness, and since, during his many years of studying the gatekeeper, he also examined fleas in his fur collar, he asks the fleas to help him and convince the gatekeeper.
In the end, his gaze weakens, and he doesn’t know whether it really became dark around him, or that his eyes are only deceiving him. However, even now he cannot fail to recognize in this darkness the radiance ebbing from the door of the law. Only he did not have long to live. Before his death, the experience of his whole life is collected in his head into a single question, which he has not yet asked the gatekeeper. He waves his hand weakly to him, because he can no longer straighten his numb body. The gatekeeper is forced to bow deeply to him, because the difference in height has not changed in favor of the person. “What else do you want to know now?” - asks the gatekeeper, - “you are really insatiable.” “Everybody is so eager for the law,” says the man, “why, then for many years, no one except me demanded to enter it?”
The gatekeeper sees that the person is already dying and, in order to reach his fading hearing, loudly shouts to him: “No one here could receive permission to enter, for this entrance was intended only for you alone! Now I will leave and close it. ”

PS For obvious reasons, could not be placed in the appropriate section.
Transferred to the appropriate section