blue trane's Journal: The Castle

The Castle give me the feeling of being much more complete and thought-out than The Trial. Kafka makes a very noble attempt to pursue little trains of thought to their utmost conclusions, in the long monologues of Olga, Pepi, etc.

The situation is similar to The Trial. K. (no first name this time) arrives at the Village, ostensibly having been sent for to do work as a Land Surveyor by the Castle. K. is treated with suspicion by the Village people, and reacts with characteristic insolence and arrogance. More than once he is compared to a child, his ignorance and lack of common sense pushing him to do things that offend conventional wisdom and the norms of behavior of the community. He seems to see himself as above the Villagers, he truly belongs in the Castle, and spends most of his time in the book thinking about it and how to get to it, become acknowledged by its officials. Slowly as the book progresses, K. gets dragged down by the weight of things (much as in The Trial), until at the end, it seems to me, he has become very much like the Villagers in the way he thinks and speaks and argues...

Once again the question is raised: why doesn't K. just leave? Why does he subject himself to this ridiculous system imposed by the Castle, which involves much of the same ambiguities, reliance on social networking over explicit rules, influence-peddling, shadowy decisions made with no explicit reasoning presented, etc., as in The Trial? Frieda (whom he meets and falls in love with, then she leaves him - but he never expresses very much dismay or heartache over her leaving him) tells him a couple times: they should have gone away, outside of the Village, where they could have been happy. The Mayor asks why he chooses to stay (he replies because - at that time - he's engaged to Frieda, and because he is without means). Yet K. never considers leaving as an option. He is firmly caught up in the struggle to make the Castle recognize him and doesn't want to leave.

What does the Castle represent? To me, it is whatever you want from society. My Castle might be raquel, or fitting in enough with the crackheads to get good crack. K.'s Castle is not a woman (he doesn't seem to be that interested in Frieda, he's far more interested in getting to the Castle; and when she leaves him, he has Olga, and Pepi, and the Herrenhof landlady who approach him and offer him a place to stay); it is more along the lines of 'fitting in' or getting the respect he feels he deserves. Yet it is out of reach, or to get to it he has to undergo innumerable hardships and indignities.

He chooses to stay and fight the intolerable social system, rather than leave (and be happy?). Yet in the course of his fight, he becomes worn down, and starts to become like the system he was at first so much against...