The Castle

Going off of the classics theme, I thought I would add Franz Kafka to my list of authors read. Over the years, I would come across Kafka and he was someone that was in the back of my mind to read if I was going to start reading much more dense content. Even though I had already owned The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, on a whim I bought The Castle and started with that instead.

K is a man newly arrived to an unnamed town with the anticipation that he would be doing work for the town as a land surveyor. Upon arrival, he is treated with incredible rudeness by the locals who never seem to give him a straight answer and only give him more unhelpful advice and information than anything. For the remainder of The Castle, K slowly assimilates, thinking he is taking three steps forward when he creates a faux pas and takes four steps back. By the end he is toward the end of the societal totem pole and has to start all over with a little help from unlikely people.

To me, The Castle was long winded and had the feeling of waves, or stop and go. There is an incredible amount of dialogue explaining the beaurocrative foundation that makes up the town’s structure. To any normal person, and I mean “normal” as someone who does not live their life on processes, this is exhausting and time consuming. There are so many inefficiencies that K questions everyone on, and in return, because he questions the system that as an outsider he has no business arguing with, he is treated like an idiot and sent on this roller coaster of doing what he is told while waiting in what seems like an invisible queue that will never let him give him his turn. The inhabitants of the town make it abundantly clear that he is not welcome there, in fact they do not welcome any visitors and outsiders, yet there is this… I want to call it a sense of duty to get the job that he was sent for done, or maybe this desperate wanting to establish himself somewhere and be a part of that society, that he willingly goes along with it. I just want to sympathize with him for having to be put through the ringer of bureaucracy especially when he makes it known that he had to sell everything he had back where he lived with the impression that he would be doing this land surveying job for an extended period of time. The entrapment of finding that nobody at the Castle has any organized clue as to whether he was even really needed or not and to just sit and wait for an answer that is not going to come; I do not know anyone who would stand for that kind of dishevelment.

It was really interesting to see, too, that towards the end of The Castle you hear every else’s point of view of the events that transpired in the last week since K had arrived in the town. It was interesting to see that the town is not the only at fault for the circumstances that Frieda, K’s fiancee, and K got themselves into, and it was not just the social faux pas that K made to upset the people. It was also his attitude of being overly confident and domineering toward everyone, that because he was summoned to do this all too important job that he be given high standards of help and hospitality. K clearly did not look into the town that he was working in and their culture, and assumed all these things, and gets a great lecture from the bar owner’s wife about his attitude toward everyone.

Oh, I learned and was reminded of many a-thing. Whenever you are visiting a different place, always be the humble guest. Never make assumptions. There are multiple views to a situation that involves multiple people. Do not walk in to a place with an air of entitlement, especially when it is a new town.

I will never read The Castle again. I am glad I did read it and was glad to have overcome the task. I would just call this another one-and-done, which has been my thing lately. It kind of bums me out that I have not had a book that wow’d me enough to want to read it again for awhile. I hope this slump ends. Either way, I would say that if you are looking for a book that is deals with sociological issues and dense with explanatory dialogue, this would be a good one. This is also a pretty good book for discussion. If you want to look into The Castle, you can find it here.

7/10