Blog #4, TT p. 50

Kafka's countryman represents both the "subject" and the "self". He is obviously subject to the Law, and all that the Law entails, which is not limited to the laws and statutes written down that govern a society. The Law represents both the literal laws of the land, and also the cultural laws of a society-- who is allowed to take part in forming those laws and why, who has power and why, how the countryman is viewed and why and how he views others and why. The countryman is subjects to these laws just like everyone else in every society and culture. But the countryman is also very much the "self". When the doorkeeper announces that he will close the door because the countryman is dying, we realize that the Law and the gates to it were all specific to the countryman. It was not a gate in the middle of town where anybody could walk by and decide that they were going to wait with the countryman and see the Law as well. It was a gate that only the countryman could wait at, but each and every person has their own gate.
Because we all strive to be unique, and strive to be ourselves (whatever that means), we all want to reach the laws that govern society and culture and manipulate them to be what we believe they should be. Our entire lives are spent trying to prove to others that we're our own, individual "selves" which is something impossible to reach. We cannot "prove" ourselves to others without the Law, and we cannot be unique without the Law. So of course it is completely futile to try to reach the Law, and change it for the better. And what does it cost us to waste our entire lives waiting outside a gate we can never enter? For the countryman, it cost him his most valuable possessions and, we assume, whatever home life he had. But for us, it costs our idea of individuality. We eventually realize that by trying to be so unique, we are utilizing those same laws we are trying to break. But because this is a realization that occurs to everybody, everywhere, it doesn't seem a very large sacrifice. It is a rite of passage for our society--to know that "resistance is useless".