The Castle

Author: Franz Kafka
Genre: fiction
Publication info: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992 (the edition I read; it was originally published in 1930). Translated from German by Willa and Edwin Muir.
Pages: 378 (including additional material)

Some books pull you through them on their own, while others are the kind you have to push yourself through. The Castle is an example of the latter. I'm not saying it wasn't interesting, but the style in which it was written made it very difficult sometimes. This is definitely not light reading.

Most people are familiar with Kafka, if at all, through The Metamorphosis. I might be the only one I know who read it, liked it, and wanted to read more of Kafka's work because of it. I can't explain why. The dreamlike quality of the story, along with the matter-of-fact way the characters deal with it, somehow appealed to me.

The Castle has this same dreamlike quality, but in a different way. In it we find K. (that's the only name we get), who comes to a village to begin his supposed employment as a land surveyor. The only problem, K. soon discovers, is that he never actually was intended to be employed as such. And it all has something to do with the Castle, the mysterious, overpowering hub of authority that is ever-present in the lives of the villagers and yet somehow perpetually inaccessible to K.

Now I'm not a literary critic (thank goodness), so I don't intend to give an in-depth analysis of this novel. That's been done many times over already. But I did find the book interesting. The dreamlike quality I mentioned comes from the fact that the entire world seems to be working against K., and for no apparent reason. Most of the time he just wants to be able to talk to his employer face-to-face, but the harder he tries, the more the opposition forces him back. And it's not through any fault of his own. K. isn't necessarily the most virtuous man, but it certainly doesn't seem fair that everything he does ends up turning against him.

What does Kafka mean by all this? Many people have speculated. You might say it has a sort of religious (or anti-religious) meaning with the Castle that's respected and feared in the village but rarely seen. But I didn't get that feeling when I read it. Kafka expertly made the Castle into the most ridiculous bureaucracy ever imagined, and I don't think that can be compared to God.

No, I'm not going to guess at meanings. It's a fairly simple story, but it's too complex to be an allegory. I'll just take it for what it is---a work of fiction. It makes me think, but I have yet to figure out what it makes me think about.