The Castle Written by Franz Kafka-An Existential Perspective Book Reaction by Mark Miller Im finished with The Castle, the third book Ive read by this author. Again Kafka creates his unique style of the “Kafkaesque” surreal world. A world of paradoxes, ambiguity, allegory, irony, and “ the uncanny”. The Castles basic story line is about K the land surveyor going to a remote village to do work for their autocratic ruler at the Castle. But all is not what it seems as the process of interpretation becomes an integral part in the novel. This obsession with meaning creates in Kafka a method for knowing and understanding the deepest self ,rather than a fragmented psyche in which he himself had been inflicted with. He had several mental health conditions, but the core condition was depersonalization/derealiaztion disorder. It is his pathos that becomes the essential guiding force behind the creative genius and art. This is the first of his books I have found elements of his symptoms of Depersonalization; where subjects feel they have changed, and the world has become vague, dreamlike, and lacking in significance. These classic symptoms show up through both aphorisms and allegorys. In fact, as you are introduced to the townspeople you enter a pathological world of the depersonalized. They are full of paranoia, fear, suspicion, and identity disturbance. The Castles mythological authority is the invisible hand that creates this Alienation effect by keeping the towns people at such a distance that unthinking emotional and personal involvement is inhibited while political messages are delivered. There is only a one way communication through messengers who in turn give messages to other messengers. All information is disseminated and convoluted. You never really know what a castle member looks like or what he does, or in fact if is who he says he is, although this is delivered through messengers also. There are only half truths, rumors, and presumptions about the members of the castle. Not unlike or own government, this agency too has unknown bureaucracies which govern even more unknown bureaucracies. It is through these sequences that you encounter comic relief, in contrast to The Trial. As a side point you never surely know if it is even a government or a religious institution. One of the best informed Kafka scholars, Richie Robertson, sensibly notes that for the author of The Castle “ the imagery of religion is valid as the expression of the religious impulse, but misleading as an interpretation of this impulse” To most critics they take the symbolism of the Castle as symbolism characterized as representing an image that evokes an objective,concrete reality and prompts that reality to suggest another level of meaning. In this case the critics interpret the Castle as a religious or even a governmental regime. I disagree with the literary form and meaning. In my opinion it is an allegory of the estranged and authoritarian relationship of his father. This I believe is also the reason he stopped mid-sentence and never completed the work. He recognized the personification and double meaning, possible unintended. The recognition most likely occurred from the alterations back and forth of monologue. He starts the beginning with a style of interior monologue “I” creates stream of consciousness in which it reaches downward to the non-verbalized level where images must be used to represent sensations and emotions. Then half way through he converts the monologue to a indirect monologue creating a distance between author and his protagonist as he now serves a s director or guide. He does this in the third person of “K” the surveyor. Some some unknown reason he chooses to never use a “He” or “She”. At some point during the end of the novel, which he never finished and stopped writing in mid-sentence to never return to it, he changed his character into a soliloquy; which is a form of stream of consciousness incorporated with a personification. This could be the reason he stopped writing it he recognized the allegory as too emotional and straining. The environment of the absurd is channeled through a psychological disorder called dissociation, [ :a disruption in the usual integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity and perception, leading to a fragmentation of coherence, unity, continuity of the sense of self] The absurd environment is an essential concept of existentialism and takes on a different meaning in literary terms. In contemporary literature the term applies to human beings-cut off form their roots-live in meaningless isolation in an alien universe. Furthermore, the Castle now becomes the villagers sense of identity and serves as the central and fabricated ideal system of the whole. A unit of a de facto conformity which function under ambiguous laws and customs. The legal imperatives that command the actual obedience and the hypothetical consent of Kafkas characters promote instead their feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and punitive self-doubt. In Kafkas psychologically complex world where nothing of moral significance follows from the bare fact that a citizen would, if asked, consent to the imposition upon him of any of the many legal imperatives that he dutifully obeys. No one dares questions the Castles power or authority, although one never knows who or what exists in the realm of the castle. K, the surveyor does question the authority, and even leaps beyond submissiveness and order by violating supposed laws, in spite of anticipated consequences. His goal is to fight, scratch, and claw his way into the Castle. K, the surveyor is not unlike Hamlet, who question his guilt and morality. Is “K” guilty of coercion and manipulating? He did use some of the town members intentionally to circumvent ways to get into the castle, but at the same time provided them with authenticity in behavior and form. As “K” contemplates this dilemma K realizes his lack of intent to harm or commit malice as the rationale. Guilt also plays a role outside the story, as Kafka explains it is our payment exacted by our “ indestructibility” ; indeed for Kafka, we are guilty precisely because our deepest self is indestructible. It is not Christian original sin, but the Shakespearean-Freudian unconscious sense of guilt that is law of Kafkas cosmos. I believe another allegory is created by the authors way of using the characters as personifications to evoke a dual interest in morality. Kafka was Jewish, but denounced his heritage and did not consider himself Jewish. In laws, theory, and morality only monotheistic religions see morality as an absolute . What Kafka was attempting to communicate was that morality is a subjective thing based on many, many factors. Most of these factor are hidden from us in the unconscious, as we have no access to them. When people give explanations for their moral behavior, they may have little or nothing to do with the underlying principles. Their sense of conscious reasoning from specific principles is illusory, And even when someone becomes aware of an underlying principle, it is not obvious that this kind of understanding will alter their judgment in day-to-day interactions. Having conscious access to the principles underlying our moral perception may have as little impact on our moral behavior as knowing the principles of language has on our speaking. What is “ the indestructible”? If there is any spiritual authority in Kafka it is his concept of “ the indestructible”.: Believing means liberating the indestructible element in oneself, or more accurately, being indestructible, or more accurately, being. Man cannot believe live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may be permanently hidden from him. One of the ways in which this hiddennness can express itself is through faith in a belief in god. The indestructible one: it is each individual human being and at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings. Whatever constitutes “ the indestructible,” we need not find any images of immortality in it. The indestructible is not a substance that prevails, but in Becketts terms a going-on when you cant go on. In Kafka, going on almost always takes ironic forms: Ks unrelenting assault on the Castle. The “ indestructible” resides within us as hope or quest, but by the grimmest of all paradoxes the manifestations of that striving are invariably destructive, particularly self destructive. K, could just leave and go back home, but he has come to do a job that he will go on fighting for until the bitter end. The protagonists in Kafka understand this futility. It is in their nature to survive and win for value and principle. That is indestructible for as long as they are above earth and ground. We as a human species would have died off 50,000 years ago without “ the indestructibility”. Our ancestor endured ice ages, famine, war, disease, and even child birth. We survived! That indestructibility was shaped into our unconscious, our wills and drives, and in our hearts by evolution. Evolution is eternal and encompasses the Universe. However, we as individuals and as a species are mortal and will end. “ The world must not be cheated out of its victory”, while Kafka seeks no victory for himself, yet he does not know defeat, “ for nothing has yet happened”. Patience becomes not so much the prime Kafkan virtue as the only resource for survival. Impatience, Kafka insisted, was the only major sin, embracing all others. “K”, is seen by the townspeople as either a savior or a threat. A women servant of an official from the castle actually leaves her position to be with “K”. To her “K” invokes a freedom of authenticity and novelty. She requests repeatedly to leave and go somewhere else. Although “K” is forced to work in a menial job as janitor, which he first was reluctant to do, he refuses to leave for his quest to enter the Castle is his personal battle of will and determination. Why is this so important to the protagonist? Is it an extended metaphor of life as we search for meaning and understanding of self and the universe? What is meant by his insistence that patience is the prime virtue of survival? And why is it a sin? Kafka wrote, “One is alone, a total stranger and only an object of curiosity. And so long as you say “one” instead of “I,” there’s nothing in it and one can easily tell the story; but as soon as you admit to yourself that it is you yourself, you feel as though transfixed and are horrified.” –“Wedding Preparations in the Country” Why I ask did he transform his monologues? The Castle Written by Franz Kafka Book Reaction by Mark Miller
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 06:39:04 +0000
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