Franz Kafka's The Castle (1926) | Book Review and Analysis
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ค. 2024
- A reflection on Franz Kafka's The Castle (Das Schloss). English translation by Willa and Edwin Muir first published by Schocken in 1930 and updated in 1954.
My thoughts on Kafka's Amerika:
• Franz Kafka's Amerika ...
Contents:
00:00 - Why talk about a book millions of people have already talked about?
01:54 - Thank you, Max Brod
02:45 - Why you should read this plotless novel
04:15 - Why you should read this unfinished novel
05:11 - The premise or situation
06:35 - Allegory
07:43 - Two main themes
10:17 - A memorable story within the story
11:03 - My personal reading/interpretation of The Castle
12:26 - Another possible reading/interpretation
13:03 - The Schocken edition: translation, prefaces, appendix
14:29 - The film adaptation
15:23 - Bottom line
16:19 - Some advice...
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Yes! I agree. My favorite Kafka story. It gave me the sense that Kafka reached a new level. It seems so perfect yet on the verge of falling apart from how loose it feels. As if Kafka took such a risk with this one, only to find he passed through unscathed. The Castle is the very moment Kafka transcends allegory and reaches the point of confession. Not in an autobiographical sense, but in a spiritual sense.
Great review.
Brilliant reflections, my friend! You're absolutely right; there are many ways to read The Castle, but this is definitely a spiritual text. I believe it is his masterpiece, the perfect illustration of his poetics and worldview. Like many people, I read The Trial first, but now I want to go back to that earlier text to read it in the light of The Castle. As a matter of fact, I would like to reread all of Kafka with this broader perspective. I just need to find the time. 😃 Have a great day, my friend. Thank you so much for stopping by and commenting!
The Castle (Franz Kafka), film by Konstantin Seliverstov th-cam.com/video/Hm-yd7fCJ1U/w-d-xo.html
The Trial (Franz Kafka), film by Konstantin Seliverstov th-cam.com/video/SA9JTxfOgAk/w-d-xo.html
Wow, thank you so much, my friend! 😃 Have a wonderful weekend!
Wuaooo! Astonishing simplicity and strong delivery on such deep analysis. Loved it! Produce more like this, brother
Thank you so much, brother! 😃 So glad to hear you enjoyed it. I did a video on his novel Amerika too, and hope to look at The Trial eventually. If you liked this one, I also recommend Dino Buzzati's The Stronghold (aka The Tartar Steppe). I did a video on it too. Have a fantastic day, and happy reading!
I think one of my favourite aspects of this book is that absolutely everything you learn is contradicted later on. Even down to if K is even a Land Surveyor or not.
I would be interested to know peoples thoughts on this.
K reads like an opportunist trying to insert and ingratiate himself within a society and he will go to any length to achieve this. He claims he was summoned by The Castle as a Land Surveyor and that his assistants are on their way, but when he is awoken by the Castellan and told he is in breach of Castle protocol his response is “What village is this I have wandered into? Is there a castle here”. Only after the castellan tells him off a bit more (all while supplying K with information to fuel his lie) does he invent that he is a land surveyor, therefore getting his foot in the door.
I read an interesting analysis somewhere (unfortunately I forget where and it is phrased much more eloquently in the original article) that compares The Trial and The Castle. Both cover similar themes of struggle against vast incomprehensible bureaucracies but with one key difference: The Trial is a system imposing itself on a man and The Castle is a man imposing himself on a system.
Kafka is my favourite author and nobody else chats about him with me, hence I turn to the internet 😂
Brilliant analysis, my friend! 😃 Thank you so much for watching, and for your insightful comments. I feel like rereading The Castle and The Trial now. Have an amazing day!
I feel the same way, in terms of discussion with others. So many younger people are into Haruki Murakami and I plead with them to read Kafka instead. However, Kafka also has a predecessor in Knut Hamsun, who is widely ignored. His masterpiece 'Mysteries' is a pre-eminent work that laid the foundation for writers like Kafka. The protagonist, Johan Nagel, arrived anonymously at a village and moved into a hotel. He also lies about his identity and intent. In many ways the book mirrors the narrative of The Castle, a difference being that it is more an absurdist satire in comparison. Henry Miller said that the Hamsun is one of his favorite authors.
Love your insights on Kafka's 'The Castle.' Well made video and thought-provoking advice at the end. ☺👍 I am on the verge of buying 'Metamorphosis.'
Thank you so much for watching and for the kind words, my friend! 😃 So happy to hear you enjoyed the video. Metamorphosis, what an unforgettable text... Have a wonderful week, and happy reading!
Muy buen video, sin duda que Kafka es uno de mis escritores favoritos. Saludos desde Venezuela.
¡Mil gracias, Lawrence! 😃 Un gigante de la literatura, sin lugar a dudas. ¡Muchos saludos, y viva Venezuela! 🇻🇪
Great video! I'm ashamed to say that I've started this book twice now and have yet to finish it. The first was many, many years ago, and the more recent was last year. I got lost in the "plot" and thought that perhaps I had missed something, but now I don't think there was anything to miss. I loved the book's beginning, the overall atmosphere, and the world-building, though I now realize that I had was wrapped up in the expectation that K was going to steadily progress towards his goal. Ha! The book is still on my Kindle, and I am now curious to revisit it just where I left off. I think that Kafka is an author whose influence I've always appreciated, and though I like the themes he tackles, I find his writing very...cumbersome, for the lack of a better word. I can't force myself to fall in love with his style, or anyone else's for that matter, but I will likely always reach for his works, as I always find something new in them. I will end with a recommendation of another tale of an upward climb: Ted Chiang's short story "Tower of Babylon."
Thank you so much, Kai, for watching and sharing your wonderful ideas! I can totally relate to your experience with Kafka. It was years after buying copies of his works that I summoned up the courage (I don't even know if that's the right word) to read them. I was particularly afraid of The Castle, so when I found myself finishing it rather quickly, I was truly surprised! As you point out, I think the issue here is our concept of "plot." (I had an awful first experience with Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, which I considered to be a masterpiece after a second reading, many years later.) Like Beckett, Kafka can be infuriating, and I began to enjoy his works when I told myself that frustrating the reader may have been part of his goal. I will say, though, that I have to be in the mood for certain authors, no matter how much I may love or admire them, and Kafka is one of them. 😃 Another thing that added to my reading experience was that classic study by Deleuze & Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. But that's another story. I looked up Chiang's "Tower of Babylon," and it turns out I have read it, but I don't remember it. Another friend also recommended Chiang recently, so it is clearly time for me to revisit this brilliant author. Thank you once again, my friend!
That was an impressive analysis of Kafka's book! Let me add to your thoughts the element of alienation, which in Kafka's oeuvre has a religious tint (think of his attitude towards Judaism), and of course the trenchant critique of bureaucracy- a theme Kafka knew very well as he was employed in insurance law firms.
Thank you so much, my friend! 😃 Absolutely, these are crucial themes I did not develop in the analysis. When we consider them, it is not surprising that Kafka made such a tremendous impact in 20th century literature and beyond. He's always mentioned alongside Joyce and Proust, of course, but if you ask me (and if you ask Ricardo Piglia), Kafka is "the main guy." His influence is the strongest, I think; maybe not necessarily in terms of style, but definitely when it comes to themes that resonate with 20th century readers and that particular way of looking at the human experience. Thanks again, and have a great day!
I would agree, i also felt that he was playing with the history of the Israelites, stemming from Egypt all the way through the diaspora, and to the early 20th century euro antisemitism.
Excellent interpretation, my friend! Have a wonderful day! 😃
Thank you so much.❤❤❤ I just finished reading 'The Castle' for the first time. Initially, I was puzzled by the slow pace of the plot, and some parts seemed unrelated. However, I couldn't stop reading because it made me laugh at times. Eventually, I began to see things from different perspectives and even recognized aspects of myself.
Thank you so much for watching, my friend, and for sharing your reading experience with us! ❤️ My experience was similar to yours. Regarding the humor, they say that Kafka would laugh while reading his work out loud to his friends. I think we have lost much of that humor due to some of the historical events that happened right after Kafka's time, but some of that (dark) humor definitely remains. Thanks again, and have a wonderful day! 😃
Just finished reading The Castle. I have to whole hardheartedly agree that the best part (perhaps even the climax?) is when Olga recounts the events that happened to her family and Amalia. It was a really interesting point of view on guilt, honor and forgiveness.
I feel like this will be a book that I will have to revisit later in life. I read the book with a friend and he pointed out all the religious references. Perhaps how K himself could be a Messiah that was sent to the village on mistake and is no longer needed.
Yes, my friend! 😃 That part really stood out to me, and my views on it haven't changed. I too wish to revisit The Castle at one point. Like Camus, I believe Kafka requires a rereading. Your idea of K as a Messiah that is no longer needed resonates with me. Another option could be that he is needed, but the people have forgotten what they need. Such a rich text. Thank you so much for watching and commenting, Diego, and have a fantastic day!
I’ve interpreted The Castle as the story of not only the imposition of said bureaucracy on an individual (and the daily struggles that pertains), but why would a character such as K.’s would be chastised by these bureaucracies. K. seems to display and intermix of adoration and hate towards The Castle. His hate towards The Castle is that it locks his future and therefore ability to access The Castle in the first place, and the want to enter it is the adoration.
This can be seen through all characters in the novel. K.’s struggle is not one of accessing The Castle exclusively, but of accepting The Castle’s authority and the position in society he’d been designated. It might be that Kafka is suggesting that as one fights against a bureaucracy out of the want to join it will only learn to accept said authority. That is further perpetuated in Chapter 2 when K. analyzes Klamm’s letter: “but he did fear the force of his discouraging environment, he feared getting used to disappointment, he feared the imperceptible influence of every passing moment…”
Also, I really enjoy the amount of contradictions in this novel. Almost every single evaluation by K. about a character is later disproven, and characters’ stances and moods change abruptly as do the dynamics of power in each scene, like the castle’s warden portrait in the Bridge Inn, a seemingly definite object whose very presence changes the dynamics of power between Hans and K.
Overall, very good review.
Fantastic analysis, my friend! 😃 Your reading of this great novel is simply fascinating. I've just finished another novel that deals with bureaucracy, though in a different way (I'll release a video on it tomorrow), so I'm still connected to this topic. Thank you so much for sharing these wonderful ideas. I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed the video. Have a wonderful day!
Great review of a book I have yet to read. But from the review reflecting my personal experience, it could easily be an allegory of a bureaucratic act like planning approval in some countries.
I totally agree, José! 😃 That is definitely a valid reading of this rich novel. I have just finished my next video, by the way, which will also be about a novel that explores bureaucracy and modernization in an allegorical mode. Thank you so much for watching and commenting, my friend, and have a fantastic day!
To me its the best book ever written about these absurd societies in which we live in where nobody knows what it is all about but we all contribute to support the senseless structure.
I agree 100%! 😃 This novel was prophetic in 1926 and unfortunately still relevant almost 100 years later. I enjoyed the echoes of this in Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe and Tanpınar's The Time Regulation Institute. Thank you so much for watching and commenting, my friend, and have an amazing day!
This is Kafka's best novel.
I agree, my friend! 😃 Thank you so much for stopping by, Gregg, and have a fantastic day!
Published posthumously, the last work of Franz Kafka's distinctive creative opus, according to critics, a canonical work of world literature. Fundamental work of world literature according to content? Psychological characterization of the characters? Yeah, we'll get to that. An artwork of socio-contextual conditioning of an epochal period? There may be certain indications of the exemplary mysticism of the bureaucratized state apparatus, but they are left open to the intellectual daring of subjective objectification; devoid of examples, in the absence of comparison, paradigmatically apostrophized as metaphors that are metaphorically presented with elements of other metaphors - the original metaphor: "castle (clerk's office), in whose rooms (offices) the aristocracy sleeps or is served beer (managers and clerks performing urgent administrative tasks jobs, crowded with documents)". Criticism of society described in the semantic expression of the stylization of literature as the only mechanism of the epochal period, without ending up in the "castle room of some tray on the night hearing". So called, "a novel of breath", a rich linguistic expression summarized in the spasm of a single sentence, supported by an exhaustive knowledge of man and his social interaction, evoked through an astonishing sense of the subjectivity of observations and the succinctness of the depiction of social relations. Beyond the above, the structure of the sentence is a vain intellect, completely stripped of external content. The author places the protagonist Jozef K., a state surveyor, in the center of the novel, who comes to the village to become the same surveyor. In hopeless attempts to achieve this, the hero falls in love with a local innkeeper, who briefly becomes his fiancée after "falling" on his shy gaze. Using elementary means, establishing contacts, social flattery, manipulative communication relations, and timely arrivals at certain places with certain people, K. tries to establish a connection for a conversation with manager Klamm in order to decipher the letter, by which he is to become a municipal surveyor. Having engaged in several social conversations completely irrelevant to his goal, he reaches the ultimate domain of his endeavor, realized in a meeting with the municipal mayor, who explains the content of the letter and the circumstances of his arrival to him in an exhaustive manner, leaving the possibility of different interpretations, yet simple-mindedly clear indications "to the village there is simply no need for another state surveyor". The relationship with Frieda is diametrically opposite, whether it was a complete crush or a feeling of true attachment, which is created and diverged on that basis. The betrothed are trying to transcend themselves and bypass the social circumstances that created them; Frieda is a respected innkeeper and one of Klamm's lovers, moreover, she enjoys being where she is, Josef K. is a state surveyor who does not perform the work of a surveyor, so he is nothing more than a school tray. Although Frieda decides on a romantic attachment and goes after the school tray, the matter dissolves during one of Frieda's monologues, in which Frieda uses rational reasoning to explain to K. that she is serving him for social use because of her contacts with Klamm. Frieda, in the true emotion of her being and attachment to Jozef K., asked him: "Say that it's not true? K.: I have to go get lunch for the teacher."... The novel is a written description of the aristocracy of the middle class framed by numerous conversations, a breakdown of the psychological and social characterization of the characters, superficial features, flat interiority, archetypes of external social rationality arising from the repressed instinct of mere survival (them well known), using the logic of reason that is woven into their bones and from those same bones that are their driving force - their being is the conceit of the working masses, the proletariat - about which they never speak. The novel's dialect is a tapping speech on the social scale degraded to a village whisper.
Thank you for this great analysis, Ivan! 😃 Have a great weekend, my friend!
Love your comparison to an immigrant’s journey. Hadn’t thought of that. Very cool.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting, my friend! Have a fantastic day! 😃