The Castle
The Castle is unlike any novel I have ever read. This could be attributed to a number of things that makes the book difficult to follow. Kafka writes with a very muddled and confusing style-and example being that his main character is simply referred to with the letter "K" throughout the novel. Even fundamental facts about the main character that are very relevant to the story such as whether or not he is truly a land surveyor remain mysterious to the reader. Undoubtedly the biggest mystery of all, however, is the fact that the novel remains unfinished. The fact that the book lacks any sort of real conclusion allows us as the readers to try and imagine what sort of ending the book would have had Kafka finished the work. Another, perhaps more important quandary the lack of an ending leaves us in is discovering what Kafka's intention was when writing this novel. One of the book's easily identifiable purposes is to criticize the inefficiency of large bureaucracies. I believe that the other major purpose was to ridicule heavily stratified class structures. The Castle is a symbol of a massive, impersonal government that takes ages to get absolutely nothing accomplished. When Barnabas goe
In the early 1900s Austria-Hungary was a monarchy ruled by Emperor Franz Joseph. For all they know there could simply be a few distinguished looking gentlemen wearing nice clothes that essentially act as Gods over the entire village simply because none of the villagers bothered to question or learn more about what goes on inside the castle walls. A simple task such as finding out whether or not a land surveyor was summoned for work took the Castle several days with several people working on it to figure out that a land surveyor was indeed summoned. It is very possible that Kafka was mocking the fact that the villagers would blindly obey and fear the Castle to such a great extent without truly knowing anything about it at all. Because of the nature of a monarchy, there was a very large and powerful central government that ruled over the empire. Franz Kafka was born just before the turn of the 20th century. In order to determine the likelihood of Kafka criticizing the slow, disorganized manner in which the government works is to assess what kind of government was in power in Kafka's native Austria-Hungary. s to the Castle, he is only allowed in what might be called the anteroom to the offices, which has a long table across the middle, at which officials read thick books. Whatever messages he delivers, he gets from the secretaries instead of from the officials themselves. There are very clear parallels between the German nobles and the officials in the Castle. There was also a great deal of racial tension in Kafka's life, but he did not seem to address any sort of racial issues in The Castle. There existed a large gulf in between the social classes where a relatively small portion of the population (roughly 5%) of German nobles had control of more or less everything. Much like the monarchy that ruled the Austria-Hungarian empire, the Castle was a very powerful, looming presence in the village. This shows how powerful the Castle was since the villagers feared even the possibility that the Castle would be angry with those that associated with the Amalia or her family.
Common topics in this essay:
Franz Joseph,
Commentary Castle,
Franz Kafka,
land surveyor,
social classes,
amalia family,
officials castle,
upper class,
monarchy ruled,
main character,
writing novel,
central government,
german nobles,
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Acceptance Essays
