The Castle

The only thing I found intriguing about this title was the fact that it was written before the totalitarianism it describes was in full effect.

That said, the book offers little else of worth. It was compiled from a collection of chapters that the author himself never presented in a complete form, and while the overall narrative is engaging enough to keep you paging through till the end, the work as a whole reads very much like a rough draft. Aside from the protagonist, most other characters are introduced and quickly dropped despite having been set up for further involvement in the plot.

Then you can read more about these characters in the 'extra' chapters that the editor simply tacks on to the back of the book...

Some folks love Kafka's books just for being so... well, Kafka-esque. I enjoy his works, but this title receives a lot of undeserved accolades in my opinion, especially when you consider some of his other books.

If you're interested in the subject matter rather than the author, check out other books such as Darkness at Noon or We the Living.

The Trial is one of my favorite stories -- my review is poor because of the design of the book itself.

This copy does that stupid thing where the edges of the pages are intentionally frayed / uneven, making it difficult to flip through. Also, who in the right mind had the idea to put the page numbers on the *inside* of the pages? That makes it, again, impossible to flip to a specific page.

The book was purchased from the store.com

I only read half of this book. It didn't make sense and if there was a trial (none at least as far as I read)it would have had to be written in a spectacular manner to lend any credence to this book. It was all about large rooms, small rooms long hallways,stairs and very brief conversations that also didn't make sense to this reader. Franz Kafka may have been a great writer, but not in my viewpoint. Page after page of gibberish between characters that seemed to come out of nowhere.
I thought I would eventually get to "The Trial," but I just couldn't plod my way through any more of this type of writing. It may have been because of the translation, but, at any rate, I felt that I made a giant mistake in ordering "The Trial."
I gave 2 stars because maybe my criticism was not warranted. I am sure that if one is a devotee of Franz Kafka they would find my review unfair.
NOT my cup of tea.

A few weeks ago by accident I stumbled across Orson Welles' 1962 version of the Franz Kafka novel The Trial. Intrigued, and knowing next to nothing about Welles, I was next led to the 2015 documentary Magician: the Astonishing Life & Work of Orson Welles which, among other things, suggests that Welles had remade Kafka's book in his own image. Finally, as my own real life abruptly spiraled into something approaching surrealism, I broke down and bought a copy of Kafka's novel. The time was ripe to take the plunge.

The copy I bought was Breon Mitchell's 1998 translation. What struck me most was how little Welles had changed the story in his adaptation. In fact, I would say Welles presented a pretty straight-forward presentation of Kafka. Steven Soderbergh's 1991 film Kafka has long been a favorite, and now so is the Welles film. If you're interested in Kafka-the-writer, and/or the novel-version of The Trial, you should look for both of these films.

The book is so well known that a review at this point seems superfluous. Much of the time the reader senses that the book is probably occurring as a dream. The protagonist called K. often demonstrates a profound lack of comprehension of his own mind and psyche, and an insouciant willingness to rationalize away any dissatisfying recognition of his own foibles and unsympathetic propensities. Presumably the guilt of which he is accused arises from these unexamined blemishes on his soul.

In fact The Trial doesn't gel as a novel. It is a fragmentary first draft of a novel, a work in progress that never found its plot line. It is apparent Kafka kept writing and writing loosely-connected scenes in able to build up settings and characters, but he never quite hammered it all together into a coherent story. The book's conclusion, while probably inevitable in some form, occurs suddenly and without satisfaction. It is tacked on in a slipshod fashion, and one senses that Kafka composed it quite quickly, almost certainly intending to improve it considerably at a later date that never came.

Still, I have read many legitimate novels which are far more tedious than this unsteady draft. The Trial continues to raise questions about troubling social behaviors that arise in human cultures. Unspoken and unexamined paranoia and guilt are probably destined to be our companions throughout all human history, at least anytime more than two or three individuals interact. Kafka's vision of that uneasy companionship is a telling one.

This book is very prophetic and scary. This is the exact persecutions Christians are facing all over the world. We are being put in kangaroo courts and being accused of absurd charges that have no merit whatsoever. Liberals want to make it a crime to be a Christian. Our freedom of religion is being taken away. They're putting up a statue of Satan in Oklahoma's stakehouse! Not of the Ten Commandments, BUT OF SATAN! Read this book and open your eyes to whats going on in the world.

This is a review of the Naxos audiobook. The narrator does an excellent job of conveying the story and, from what I've seen of the written version, it's a lot easier to get through as an audiobook. (Let someone else figure out how to read the long sentences with too many commas.) That said, it's difficult to listen to a whole book about a man getting nowhere in his quest to speak with someone in authority. It reminds me of some "customer service" experiences I've had, except that the story here goes on for weeks. There are numerous blind alleys, and several seemingly senseless situations where one later learns a totally unexpected and possibly plausible explanation (such as the real reason why the messenger is so bad at delivering messages). Except that once you start to accept one explanation of odd behavior, another one may come along to raise more doubts. Bureaucracy takes a beating throughout, as the incredible and byzantine system imposes obstacles at every turn and its inefficiency is blatant. Other reviewers have cited the dream-like character of much of it, but to me it seemed more like a study in how human behavior is affected by culture and context -- people behave oddly because their society demands this behavior for acceptance and even survival. I also felt at times that this was a parody of deeply intellectual writing - incredible streams of conversational gobbledegook and double talk serving as justification for ridiculous behaviors and situations. Then again, it's a story about how easily people condemn others for actions that are, at worst, innocent violations of arcane rules and often simply attempts to express individuality or to state the obvious. As you can see from these many ways of looking at it, this is grist for discussion in a philosophy or literature class. It's wordy and and long winded with many different potential interpretations of almost every scene. It raises a lot more questions than it answers, especially since it was unfinished (although the narrator does tell us how the author intended to end it).

Long and... infuriating?

One begins to understand that the author, in order to make you understand the plight of his protagonist, intends to bring you both to a place of exhaustion. Had I known it was unfinished, I probably would never have begun the book, but, even incomplete, one gets the idea. 400 or so pages and you see clearly that the author could have gone on for another 400 in order to get his point across.

It would be too simple to say Kafka's lesson is that bureaucracy is dehumanizing, or the futility of continuing effort in the face of the absurd. I would argue that most of the villager's fears of rules, or of the castle, exist only in their head. Time and time again it is shown that a certain thing must be done not because the castle decrees it, but because the social order of the village peasants requires it.

Thus, while we see the bureaucracy is indeed absurd, it is made that way not from above, but from below, and the real enemy in this book are the social conventions and standards of propriety among the common people. Which is quite a good theme, but this book is just too long and exhausting and unpolished to do it justice.

The Trial by Franz Kafka.
Much has been written about this book. Many opinions seem to be rife about the meaning and the basic allegory of the plot and the story.
Kafka came from a German-speaking Jewish family and lived in Prague in Bohemia.He had a background of working in a job described by his father as a `breadjob' meaning he was just earning money with no career.He worked for an insurance company where he dealt with worker's injury claims, although he had a doctorate in law. He had a five-year attachment to Felice Bauer and although it consisted only of a number of meetings and a great deal of correspondence, they were engaged several times, each time breaking it off until their relationship finally failed in1917.

Kafka completed `The Trial' in 1915, though it was unfinished and later required editing by Max Brod his close friend. It has been studied and many opinions exist of its meaning. Kafka's dying wish was that Brod should burn the manuscript, but happily, he didn't.
There seem to be several interpretations. On the one hand,the story is supposed by some to be the depiction of the futility of struggling against fate or God. Others suppose it represents Kafka as a Jew in a society where Jews were condemned openly or behind the scenes, since anti-Semitism was rife in Europe even before the First World War.

The book begins with an `arrest'. The central character, `K' (is it coincidence that he has the author's initial and all other characters have spelled-out names?), a man aged thirty who works in a bank is confronted by two men who claim he is under arrest, but free to work and move around, but that a trial will commence to determine his future.
In the following story, K becomes acquainted with a number of characters who lead him in a fanciful dance designed to indicate the futility of his attempts to battle the `Courts'. It turns out almost everyone he encounters has been or is involved with the courts and even his family know he has a forthcoming trial without his communication with them. Everyone knows he is subject to `The Process' but even K never discovers what it is he is supposed to have done. I won't spoil the ending but I think it is symbolic not real. He meets various people who claim to be able to circumvent the outcome of the court and its decision, but he is at times enraged by it all and at other times passive, resisting any help whoever it is offered by. In the end, his fate is the reward he reaps by his intransigence and his resistance to taking advice.

My own feeling about the book is that it is not as simply asseeing it as written with one message. I think there are layers of allegory. On the one hand, one could interpret it as showing how society treats minorities.There is a veiled condemnation and of the individual which is unfathomable at first, subtle and hidden, but eventually becoming frank and obvious. A Jew living in Eastern Europe might well feel that was so.
Another layer is the futility of fighting against Society's opinions. Everyone is part of a social society and whomever you talk to they are part of it and that is revealed repeatedly in the book. K finds that even places he never identified as part of his trial are part of the courtrooms and court process. He doesn't trust his lawyer - OK, he has common sense!
Yet another portrayal of the author's underlying theme requires one to see how he might have viewed society's opinion of his relationship with Felice. It was off-on. It consisted of a lot of correspondence and few `in the flesh' encounters. Could it be that The Trial mirrors his feeling about how society might have viewed his eventual refusal to lead a normal, married life? Was he ostracised as a result?
If one transgresses, society may condemn one. It might not be immediately apparent that some force is working in the background against you. The evolution of the antipathy may emerge with time and eventually result in the apex of condemnation by the very social world in which one lives. To be Jewish and to jilt someone publicly - might that not evoke feelings of guilt - even a feeling that society condemns one without any visible trial?
But in the end, what is K guilty of? Is he just guilty of digging his heels in against a manipulative, turgid system, designed to visitits hatred and injustice on anyone who chooses to be different or even be born different? He is guilty of underestimating the power of the hierarchy. He is guilty of ignorance of the very system that controls us. He is even guilty of passivity. It results in the eventual judgement where the book ends.

So, the verdict? My verdict?

This is a book that has made me think more than any other I have read since I was a teenager (the first time I read it). Recommend it? Well if you have tolerance for some boring parts and patience to reap the eventual reward of the book, then yes.Not for everyone. It's not an adventure book but as someone who works a as a tiny cog in a big machine it speaks to me as no other book does!

Classic Account of Alienation and Absurdity

Review of "The Castle" by Franz Kafka

This book made me into a Kafka admirer. He brings life to characters in otherwise drab situations and makes them seem very real. The reader feels the frustration, absurdity, the pettiness and the powerlessness in a personal way. You feel the haughtiness and aloofness of the Castle staff as if they were a part of your own community. You feel the pettiness and delusional gossip of the townspeople as if you were seeing it first hand. The story is riveting and the pace seems fast even when there is little action.

The story starts with the protagonist (identified only by his initial, K.) walking to what sounds like a routine surveying job. Soon he is frustrated by a very confusing series of obstacles. As the story develops the obstacles become more chaotic. K.'s original purpose in going to the castle is never fully elaborated and his motives seem lost or stolen. The forces acting upon K. are shrouded. It seems as if some invisible force has plotted to test K. to the limit of human endurance of tolerance of ambiguity.

Kafka combines the themes of:
social class commentary,
alienation from a heartless social system,
absence of any protective power,
salvation,
redemption,
fear of strangers,
fear of change,
search for the meaning of life,
inscrutability of authorities,
indifference of forces ruling human fate,
persistence in the face lost purpose,
abuse of power
and
acceptance of pointlessness goals.

As the plot progresses it takes on a surreal nightmare quality. Is the protagonist having a nightmare, going insane or confronting the reality of his situation?

There is no end to the frustration. We are never told if K. is having a nightmare or going insane. We never discover why K. is so determined to enter the castle that he would tolerate and even join in to the absurdity. His original purpose of doing a surveying job could never justify his struggle to gain admittance. We are left seeing K. as a perpetual outsider. Perhaps Kafka is telling us that there is no end or limit to frustration, alienation and absurdity. Those seeking an answer to the ageless enigma of existence will never find a simple resolution.

This is a disturbing work that challenges conventional notions of plot and character development while testing the readers conception of his/her purpose in life. The Castle will confront the reader in unexpected ways and raise emotional personal issues that would otherwise be repressed.

See:

The Metamorphosis

The Trial

Amerika

Collections:

The Diaries of Franz Kafka (Schocken Classics Series)

Collected Stories (Everyman's Library)

The Zürau Aphorisms of Franz Kafka

Blue Octavo Notebooks

Kafka's Selected Stories (Norton Critical Edition)

Give It Up: And Other Short Stories

Great German Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)

I highly recommend this book.

This book can be read as an introduction to dystopian literature.
Joseph K.(the protagonist) arrives in a village and struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities who govern it from a castle.
K. believes that he's been invited to a town to do some land surveying, and realise upon his arrival that his invitation was maybe the result of a bureaucratic mishap. K. wants answers from the officials at the castle that overlooks the town.
This book is about bureaucracy, meaning, connection, relationships, and how hierarchy impacts the way we experience and live in this world.
It may be unfinished, but it is an amazing book that can test your conception of the real purpose in your life.

I read The Trial several years ago, and I remember that I struggled with it and did not enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoyed Kafka's short works. So it was with some trepidation that I gave Kafka's novels another chance with The Castle.

Happily, I found it surprisingly absorbing. The Castle begins as if in a dream. K. wanders into a village on a cold winter`s evening, seeking a room for the night. He is quickly told that the authorities at the Castle do not allow strangers to pass the night. K. responds that he was summoned by the Castle; he is the new land surveyor. Is this true? Is it merely a ruse K. invents to secure shelter for the night? It does not matter. As in a dream, what K. says becomes, at least to K. himself, immediately true. Furthermore, taking up his position as land surveyor becomes a matter of prime importance and urgency. Yet he of course immediately encounters the chief problem of the Kafkaesque universe -- to reach the Castle he must navigate a system of rules that is as incomprehensible and senseless as it is uncompromising.

In the years since I last read Kafka, I had forgotten how bitingly funny he can be. The Castle is rich with satire and even slapstick-style comedy. Although this is often cited as an autobiographical work, Kafka allows little sympathy for his bewildered land surveyor. K.'s constant scheming, manipulations, and obsessive behavior are portrayed as ironically absurd and pathetic. Only in rare reflective moments could I feel the full impact of the tragedy of K.'s situation: that of the tenacious seeker left eternally in a dark, cold courtyard, hopefully waiting for an encounter that will never come.

This is not to say that I never found The Castle challenging to read. Kafka not only writes in long sentences, but he also writes paragraphs that can extend for many pages without a break. The tiresomeness and frustration of reading this style might add to the atmosphere of the novel, but it also makes voluntarily sticking with the book something of a test of will. The chore is not relieved by Kafka's plain, unexciting prose and tendency to ramble. In the end though, I was glad that I finally took the time to read this funny, frustrating, and ultimately sad work, and I am sorry that Kafka never finished it. This is not an easy read or terribly exciting plot-wise, but if you enjoy imaginative, absurdist situations and colorful characters The Castle is highly recommended.

"The Castle," though still an unfinished novel at his death, is Kafka's lengthiest and most well-developed novel. The crux of the storyline is a land surveyor, only referred to as "K.", and his gloriously futile efforts to gain knowledge of what exactly he is to be doing in the village. For, the village and everyone in it belongs to the Castle, an aged and unimpressive conglomeration of buildings and fortifications on a hill overlooking the village below. Yet, the Castle is not only a place, but a "state of mind", a state where incessant but enigmatic regulations and procedures saddle the village and its inhabitants with an insurmountable mountain of files, papers, and utter absurdity. For nothing can be accomplished without navigating the tangled and unfathomable labyrinth of rules and regulations of the Castle. Yet, its officials are inaccessible. Indeed, even the shortest contact with the lowliest of officials is almost unheard of, and even if this can be accomplished, nothing ever comes out of it.

The Castle enforces its power and influence over all of the village's inhabitants. Even a threat of action against a citizen is enough to persuade the entire community to ostracize its own. One can waste years of an otherwise productive life to try to prove false an allegation, yet because there was no formal report or deposition taken, there can be no action taken to rectify the situation. Yet, because the situation cannot be rectified, the victim remains in an incessant state of limbo, while the very essence of life is slowly drained out. Indeed, the indefatigable torment of the Castle and its regulations render an entire population impotent and at the mercy of its myriad of officials.

Anyone who has read "The Trial," may find some common themes. In fact, "The Castle" is in many ways similar to "The Trial." Both novels have the same recurring circular logic and logical fallacies that comprise their legal systems. Both engage in influence peddling with little effect. Both have the same protagonist - "K" - who unexpectedly enters a parallel world of which he knows nothing and can gain little knowledge. However, "The Castle" is more developed and less ominous and foreboding than "The Trial." Of course, there is no conclusion or climax in "The Castle", as "K." is left in perpetual limbo. Indeed, in the new Shocken translation, the book ends in mid-sentence, as if the pen had floated off the paper and disappeared.

This novel isn't for everyone. For first-time Kafka readers, I would recommend "The Trial" over "The Castle," as it is more poignant and definitive in its conclusion. Perhaps that this book is left unfinished will disturb some readers. Honestly, though, it is fitting that this novel ends in mid-sentence, as it seems as if there will never be a conclusion to "K's" plight. Also, this novel lacks punctuation and most sentences are rambling on without periods and paragraphs, so reading it can become tedious at times.

However, for Kafka fans, this book will be a must-read, as there are few ...

Just what is the castle? Is it simply (as commonly believed) a symbol of the pervasive bureaucracy everyone gets inured to in civilized society? Is there a religious connotation as Kafka's editor and friend Max Brod believed? Does it represent God, salvation, or a spiritual truth the agnostic subconsciously strives for in an outwardly unfathomable existence? Can it represent the futile, or hopeless acceptance that the "outsider" seeks in a generally indifferent and frequently hostile world? Is it any, or all of the above, or something entirely different?

In much of his work, Kafka poses questions that have no pat answers. He is simultaneously the most alien, and the most human of all authors. The protagonists of his novels and short stories each have part of their darkly brilliant but troubled creator within them, but the psyche of each living being inhabits them as well. All of us at times, peer out of the eyes of Gregor Samsa, Joseph K., or the frustrated land surveyor of THE CASTLE, known simply as K. I think the key to understanding THE CASTLE is to understand the primacy of the individual, and of his or her personal, subjective thoughts, actions, and responsibilities, as opposed to those dictated by the collective and represented by incomprehensible rules, absurd procedures, and organizational hypocrisy.

Kafka's parable BEFORE THE LAW tells of a man who comes to a partially open gate through which he must pass to gain admittance to the Law, and meets a gatekeeper who won't let him pass. He is told to wait and maybe he will eventually be let through. He waits for years on end, at times trying to bribe the keeper, all to no avail. Finally as he is about to die, he asks why all this time no one else sought admittance, and is told that the gate was meant only for him and the gatekeeper then shuts it.

The above parable was included and expounded upon in Kafka's most famous novel THE TRIAL, but it has resonance for his unfinished novel THE CASTLE as well. We can substitute the Law for the Castle and come away with similar thoughts. Kafka searches in vain for an explanation..a reason..a meaning..to an outwardly incomprehensible existence, and comes away frustrated at every turn. K. keeps trying to reach the Castle, keeps looking for answers, while people around him just accept the absurdities only he seems to see. This failure in the continual search for reason in an unreasonable world can only lead to a kind of self realization..the recognition that all meaning is subjective. K. is doomed to fail, but we the readers, who look through his eyes, are the beneficiaries of the process. We must come to the conclusion that it is only what we think and do as individuals that has any meaning, or gives purpose to life. To Albert Camus, THE CASTLE is fundamentally an existentialist novel. Kafka gave up on finishing THE CASTLE, and even had he survived the disease that ultimately lead to his death, it would have remained unfinished. Just as well that the writer who refused to supply easy answers, or come to simplistic conclusions, in this case did likewise with the ending.

Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924) was one of the major German-language fiction writers of the 20th century. He was a Jew living in Prague and working for the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute. He wrote in his spare time and was inspired by the problems associated with bureaucratic institutions - such as we read in "The Castle."

I read all of Kafka's work and am putting together a Listmania list from my notes and experiences. His short novella "Metamorphosis" is among the best short works ever written. Unfortunately, he did not write and publish much when he was alive. Most of what is available was published after his early death, and some of it is edited (possibly) poorly as in "Amerika." His writings vary from novels to one page impressions of life, such as one essay that is about looking out a window. The novels revolve around a young to middle aged protagonist male named "K," who battles the courts and bureaucrats.

"The Trial" is an unfinished novel. It is similar in idea to "The Castle," but it is much more intense, since it involves a life and death situation. It reaches its maximum intensity in the last few complex chapters where K visits a Cathedral. There K meets a Priest who relates a parable to K that explains his own situation. The novel has a complex and unfinished ending.

The novel is good but the reader is left with the same question as with the other English translations: will we ever understand all of his writings as English readers? Are there points here that we will miss because of the translation to English? I found this quotation that makes that point (from Wikipedia):

"Kafka often made extensive use of a trait special to the German language allowing for long sentences that sometimes can span an entire page. Kafka's sentences then deliver an unexpected impact just before the period--that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved due to the construction of certain sentences in German which require that the verb be positioned at the end of the sentence. Such constructions are not duplicable in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same effect found in the original text."

In any case, this is not as good as "Metamorphosis," and few would expect that it could be, but still it is excellent and is more complex than "The Castle."

Franz Kafka is rightly regarded as one of the great writers of the 20th century. His relatively few works have been reviewed and studied ad infinitum, so it may seem rather pointless for me to write yet another review.

But I must confess to a personal bias: Kafka is one of the handful of writers that I can read over and over again, especially his shorter stories. His novels, such as The Castle, are harder going. Complex sentences make the reader focus on the words and the meaning of phrases. It is a bit like savouring the flavours and textures of a delicious meal - not like Homer Simpson wolfing down his food.

The Castle was unfinished when Kafka died. The first edition published in 1927 was finished by the editor based on prior discussions with Kafka.

"K," the principal character in the book, arrives as a stranger in the village below the Castle to take up an official position as Land Surveyor for the region. But he faces an illogical sequence of events and fearful uncertainty, pushed and pulled by the mysterious, all-powerful officials in the Castle that prevent him from either knowing his duties or even taking them up. He never gets to meet the officials who appointed him, but even his contacts with their subordinates is through ambiguous intermediaries.

Moreover, as a stranger in the village, K also faces the petty enmities and opposition of the villagers that increase his isolation and provide a sub-text to the main themes - or, as K would say - is it actually the main theme? These kinds of contradictions recur frequently throughout the narrative.

On a more fundamental level the story is one of human isolation, of man's quest for freedom and validation. That is the uplifting part. But there is a deep pessimism in the book as well. Everything that K attempts seems to fail. The mysterious Castle seems to emerge triumphant in every encounter.

The world has changed immensely since "The Castle" was written early in the 20th century. But Kafka deals with themes that are still with us - and which, in fact, may have become more relevant today.

Governments and bureaucracies still oppress the powerless. Life is still subject to the caprices of fate and officialdom that form central themes in this book. We still encounter pettiness as well as nobility of humanity in our individual lives.

It is not so much the broad story line that fascinates me in this book (although the reader does want to know the ultimate fate of K), but rather the flow of words and the imagery that they conjure up as one reads. In fact, you can enjoy short passages almost as stand-alone stories.

The Castle is a deeply provocative book for readers who care to reflect on the universalities of the human condition and the universalities of bureaucratic desires to control the citizenry.

Resistance to reading Kafka's most emblematic unfinished novel was largely the result of a suspicion on my part of any novelist who wilfully betrayed a reader's understandable desire to know what's Really Going On. If frustration were to be the only reward for having committed to reading the novel, then I didn't wish to join the Kafka reading club. Added to what was my suspicion of committing to an already clearly-stated intent to deceive was the fact that the novel is termed `unfinished'. So not only was Kafka determined from the outset to not allow his reader to rest on any easy ground of recognition, he also had the temerity to further undermine any desire to interpret by refusing to `finish' his novel. Oy vey! For over thirty years I've wanted nothing to do with him.

I'm not proud of this stance; and to rectify matters I put aside my childish need for certitudes and I purchased a copy of the new translation of The Trial. I'm very glad that I did. It's a difficult novel to pin down and this may be why it has had such an enduring hold on our imaginations over the decades. Kafka's refusal to clearly articulate the subject matter of his novel places the reader in the same position as Josef K. The reader and the hero become one. This results in an almost compulsive desire on the part of the reader to find out what's going on; but where the one-to-one mapping breaks down is that Josef K. at many points in the novel won't ask obvious questions - questions that a reader would deem essential. He confounds his own need to know. Or perhaps it might be more productive to say that he betrays his need to know. If Knowledge is Power then Josef K. is the ultimate Helpless Man. As indeed are all the characters in the novel. Those on the `inside' of the Law are perfectly explicit in positing a hierarchy of Knowledge to which they have no access. They too are in some senses powerless. They cannot act in any other way. They are bound to the Guilty as the Guilty are bound to their `crimes'.

The interpretive compulsion goes into high gear on reading The Trial and this is why so much has been allowed to be read `into' the novel. It's about Bureaucracy (in some Weberian way)! It's about Totalitarianism! It's about Existentialism! Is it? I honestly don't know. I do know that it's about a very ordinary, bourgeois man caught in a system that may very well be of his own making. How so? Because his route to redemption is travelled on the path of acceptance. He walks willingly, obligingly to his sacrificial death much as Isaac allowed himself to be placed on the altar by Abraham. Echoes of Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith abound. Submission to The Law is very much more than any legalistic Code. The Law is deeply religious in its presentation and symbolism in the novel.

One can't help speculating on Josef K's guilt. It resides, for me, in his refusal in the course of his life to acknowledge or contemplate anything outside himself. He is a very small, petty, self-contained man who's crime and subsequent guilt forces him to confront, acknowledge, come-to-know and forgive, The Other. It's a marvellous novel and I'm so very glad that I read it. Finally.

THE CASTLE by Franz Kafka (Hardcover Definitive Edition)
The Castle

I found it interesting to read the customer reviews of Kafka's "The Castle." It is obvious that there are no clear answers to what the book "means." Is it an analogy to modern, impersonal society; a condemnation of bureaucracy; a search for salvation; a quest for enlightenment over ignorance? The protagonist, "K", is a land-surveyor, purportedly retained by The Authorities to do some work. But what he is supposed to do is never made clear. He needs to meet with The Director, but somehow can never make contact with him. Along the way, he meets a number of characters --- The Mayor, The Barmaid, various assistants - all of whom present their view of reality. I can see The Castle as an existentialist play, perhaps by Pirandello or Brecht, or even Beckett. There is virtually no plot, and very little in the way of character development. The work ends in mid- sentence, suspended in time and space. The Castle itself is both a literal stone-and-mortar structure and a metaphor for impersonal authority...perhaps even a Dante-esque representation of hell.
It is probably helpful to consider "The Castle" in its historical and social context: the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and end of the Hapsburg Dynasty, and the threshold of World War. So "K" is Modern Man: alienated, alone, disaffected, consumed with angst and ennui.

So... someone wants to describe a fragmented, uncommunicative society and a Hellish bureaucracy... fine. But after a while, there is really not much happening here. While some aspects are slightly surreal, there's not enough of that to be fantastical or symbolic, and certainly there's not enough plot to propel a story of any interest based in reality. Eventually, you have to really ask yourself why not move on to something with a bit more point to it... or something more interesting in its pointlessness? Why go down this rabbit hole of red-herrings that never deliver fruit... to mix a bunch of metaphors.

When KafKa died, this novel, on which he had already stopped working for a few years, was left unfinished. It actually ends in mid-sentence!

The reader is told nothing of the internal thoughts of the protagonists, of their real motivations and objectives. There is no resolution to the multiple questions that arise from the plot. In fact, as the same events are often reported very differently by various characters, the reader is led to ponder about the relativity of truth.

Though challenging in its substance, this novel is easy to grasp and fully enjoyable.

It is strongly recommended to all who enjoy modernity.

Those like myself who seldom read fiction but enjoy looking at the world through different lenses may find the reading of this work rewarding. K's travails evoked memories of my time in the military (in Southeast Asia): nothing is as it appears, days of boredom are interrupted by moments of bewildering activity, people have whole menus of hidden agendae, one struggles to attain goals that later prove empty of significance, chance meetings turn out to have been pivotal, and apparently chance meetings turn out to have been carefully staged for one's benefit (or detriment!). K lives in a world very much like ours... where the puppetmasters are unknown strangers, and our companions turn out to be very unlike what they appear. If this novel has any practical value (heresy!) it is as a manual on techniques of 'how to navigate in the dark.' For those who doubt it, one can navigate in the dark, but one must use one's ears (distant sounds of crashing waves, the echoes of thunder, the direction of the seabreezes). The biggest obstacle to finding one's way is a full moon -- one can see the sea, but the stars (far more important!) disappear from view. ... All in all, I liked Kafka's book. As each of the characters around him reveal the reasons behind their bizarre behaviors, they become 'normal' humans, disappointing but less weird. K is in some ways a lightning rod, provoking his very upset neighbors into revealing the reasons for their anger and frustration with him. After awhile one doesn't even care any more about The Castle and its occupants; the village is more real and surviving in it is a lot more important than escaping from it.

To me, this is the quintessential Kafka book. This book has it all: subtle touches of surreal realism, Kafka's hallmark bureaucratic ramblings, bizarre situational comedy, and strong characters that are apt to suddenly burst and reveal depths of their psyche you could've never imagined.

All in all, the story simply describes all the things an adult has to deal with in their day-to-day life. It's just that everything is intensified and everything is amassed on top of each other, like some horrible nightmare of a hundred minor inconveniences.
Commonly, the protagonist in the Castle will find himself
A) madly in love, but beginning to drift away from his lover, or even desperately trying to hold on to their fleeting love
B) having to earn his living, doing a job that just sucks
C) finding a place to live
D) trying to find his way through a nightmarish buraeucratic maze
E) and also he is cold, hungry, and he never seems to be able to get a good night's rest
all at once, in one of the many, many brilliantly orchestrated scenes of The Castle that you just can't help but awe at.

But at the same time, there is a strange mystical quality to the world of The Castle. Kafka always manages to explain--nay, *illuminate*--the bureaucratic procedures of his horrifyingly familiar worlds with such astonishing detail and sober clarity, but The Castle goes even beyond that. Here, the bureaucratic process almost seems fantastical, the bureaucrats wielders of terrible magic, and yet it all always remains true to reality.

The quintessential Kafka book, and a highly entertaining read at that, too. Especially recommended to those who are just starting to find their way into adulthood, that is, those starting to have to fend for themselves and deal with the bureaucratic system.

This edition of Kafka's monumental 'The Castle' reproduces the left over fragments and deleted sequences that Max Brod produced after Kafka's death. It marks the most complete presentation of this great work since its original release. 'The Castle' contains Kafka's most haunting and wonderful qualities: a nightmarish psychological intensity paired with a satirical slaying of modernity. It involves a man named K who is commissioned as a 'Land Surveyor' at a Castle who must make his way without friends or allies. As he proceeds, he is thrust into an irrational universe of arbitrary rules and punishments, where there is both a callous indifference to the needs of man and a pious respect of absurdity and authority. Kafka was perhaps the most successful writer to represent the metaphysical and psychological darkness of our era through an investigation of the material world. His genius is both nuanced and expansive. Do not miss this supreme masterpiece.

This novel starts at the arrival of an engineer called K at a village. Despite his assertion, no one can confirm his contract with the Castle. Then, K decides the direct negotiation with it, although he doesn't know where the Castle is. This absurd beginning of the story suggests the atmosphere of this novel. Every trial to go to the Castle fails though it is visible from the village. Every effort is felt meaningless to access here, because no one knows the way to it. No people except a woman help him with interest. The woman becomes his lover, but soon leaves him. At last he succeeds to meet the attorney of the Castle, but there is little hope. His trial to contact the Castle continues without any disappointment...
The above is a rough sketch of this novel. We notice that the important is not the story, but the process of his behavior. He feels little emotion against his lover at the village. He has little pleasure even when the attorney of the Castle says to research the existence of his contract. He feels as if it is natural when his lover betrays him. His aim is to keep the contract with the Castle and only that. Making no human relations with village people, he is going to perform his obligation to the Castle with the strict will, although it doesn't give him any assurance of the existence of the contract.
The theme of this novel is his highly rational and little emotional behavior in this absurd situation that symbolizes our society. His psychology is only the adaptation to it. The story ends abruptly without any conclusion like our lives. We have no lessons from this novel, but only experience the lonely soul in the absurd world.
We must admit that this experience is suitable for some situation. This novel will bring the supreme sympathy to those who is replaced on the same environment.

Judging from the commentaries on here, this is a book one either "gets" or "doesn't get"... I'm startled that several reviewers didn't consider K an interesting character; I always thought he was the best of Kafka's alter-egos--vain, short-tempered, tirelessly calculating, yet endearingly scrappy.
It is important to stress that this novel was put together posthumously from Kafka's chaotic notes, and that there were numerous unresolved plot threads that had to be sorted through; thus the book in it's present state is essentially just an editor's "best guess" at what decisions Kafka might've made if he had finished it himself. In Max Brod's version, an appendix was included with the alternate possibilities that Kafka had written at various points in the narrative. This was a wise decision-- it essentially preserved the work as the author had left it, and it also added to the amorphous, disoriented feeling of the book. Reading that version while referring to the appendix is much like accompanying Kafka through the labyrinthine process of creating his unwieldy epic.
Part of the charm of Kafka is in the sincere amateurishness of his work. He seems bored by the mechanics of constructing a tidy, coherent plot; he easily gets sidetracked and lost in his own wildly inspired creations. He abandons his work in the way a bewildered child will abruptly walk away from an unresolved, too-ambitious crayon masterpiece. In this version, although the translator went to great pains to preserve the feeling of Kafka's language, he unfortunately left out these important notes, thus turning this strange, unique book into a more conventional novel.

I read somewhere that Kafka used to read the newly-written chapters of THE CASTLE to his friends who would laugh uproariously along with the author. I found this the scariest thing about the book, indeed one of the strongest clues that late 20th century America is immeasurably distant from early 20th century Austria-Hungary. This book will give you nightmares. It is nothing so childish as a Hollywood horror movie, but a somehow crumpled, twisted, horrifying view of human nature, especially as manifest in bureaucracies. K needs to speak to someone to get something done. He approaches the castle where the lord lives. The whole story involves his endless efforts to speak to someone, anyone, who can help him contact the servant who has the ear of the clerk who can speak to the courtier who might be able to talk to the cousin who occasionally is known to have the ear of the lord. And of course, K is continually frustrated. Not to mention you, the reader. It is the stuff of the worst nightmares. Thus, though it is extremely unpleasant,without any hint of beauty, love, or human feeling, THE CASTLE is a most powerful novel, one of the best I have ever read. I can't say I liked it, but it impressed me no end. If you have ever read anything else by Kafka and liked it, you will definitely like this one. It was never finished, but then such a novel can have no finish.

Well, I've just finished reading The Trial for the sixth, maybe even eighth time, and as usual my brain is buzzing with all the unanswered questions and unspoken quandaries that this book embeds in the reader's mind.
An aside - this is the first time I have read this particular translation, having read the Muir's work before. Perhaps this translation is a bit livelier, and the chapters, or sequences, are grouped a bit differently, but the general experience of reading and digesting this book was much the same as with the Muir's version. One caution, if you are a first time reader do not read the introduction first. The author gives away much too much of the story and ending in the introduction.
Now, back to the book itself. As "they" say, the mark of a true classic is that you can reread the book several times and always find it fresh. This is most certainly the case with The Trial. I always struggle with the question of K.'s innocence. The reader is told, unequivocally, that the Law is attracted to guilt. Is this an illustration of the unreasoning, monolithic madness that
so often surrounds totalitarian states, or is Kafka tellling
the reader indirectly that K. is guilty? I think most readers,
especially me, want to like and identify with the central
protagonist of a novel, but on this particular rereading
I noticed that K. is really a pretty nasty character. He is
arrogant beyond belief, selfish, treats women and most everyone
else as objects, and is even potentially violent. He alienates
and insults people who have the desire and the means to help him
navigate the formalities and uncertainties of his arrest and
trial. Or, is he an essentially decent fellow who, beset with
unrelenting frustration and anger at being accused and arrested
for a crime he didn't commit, decompensates into irrational
actions? Don't expect easy answers from Kafka. He is not going
to wrap everything up in a pretty bow, fully resolved, so that
you can feel good. It's a damned disturbing, sometimes bizarre,
and ultimately amazing novel. What is noteworthy is how
deceptively simple the construction of the plotline is. First,
the novel is short. Second, there are no parallel or
simultaneous plotlines occurring. There is only one plotline,
that of K. as he is initially arrested and subsequently tries to
make sense of what the charges are and how to deal with them. K.
is in every scene. There's no ,"meanwhile, back at the
courthouse, Inspector Smith was...". So the story, if this novel
can be said to contain a "story", moves along quite quickly.
Kafka's prose style is crisp and unadorned, as you might expect
from someone educated in business and law in early 1900's
Prague.And it's a good thing that he writes so clearly, because
the story itself contains not only some astonishingly bizarre
scenes (the flogging in the closet springs to mind) but dizzying
explanations of the procedures and logic of the court, the Law,
the judges, and lawyers. Imagine a writer like Tom Robbins, or
Don Delillo, with their hallucinogenic segues and refusal to bow
to consistency and logic, trying to pull off the "Lawyer"
or "Painter" sequences. It would be a soggy mess. But Kafka with
his precision and austerity makes it breathtaking.
It's funny, when my friends see me reading Kafka the initial response is almost always surprise and some variation of "Yuck!"
Of course, they haven't read him, but everyone "knows" that he is weird and dark and disturbed plus the book is old and doesn't probably even have a happy ending. Oh well, their loss.
I really want to take a class on Kafka, ideally focussing on the Trial. It is puzzling and unsettling and I'd love to hear other's thoughts on the symbolism and meaning contained in the book. In fact, if you're a Kafka scholar, or just someone who likes and has given some thought to this book, email me with your thoughts.
I unhesitatingly recommend this novel. It is important. It is certainly important to me.
ng

Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924) was one of the major German-language fiction writers of the 20th century. He was a Jew living in Prague and working for the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute. He wrote in his spare time and was inspired by the problems associated with bureaucratic institutions - such as we read in "The Castle."

I read all of Kafka's work and am putting together a Listmania list from my notes and experiences. His short novella "Metamorphosis" is among the best short works ever written. Unfortunately, he did not write and publish much when he was alive. Most of what is available was published after his early death, and some of it is edited (possibly) poorly as in "Amerika." His writings vary from novels to one page impressions of life, such as one essay that is about looking out a window. The novels revolve around a young to middle aged protagonist male named "K," who battles the courts and bureaucrats.

"The Trial" is an unfinished novel. It is similar in idea to "The Castle," but it is much more intense, since it involves a life and death situation. It reaches its maximum intensity in the last few complex chapters where K visits a Cathedral. There K meets a Priest who relates a parable to K that explains his own situation. The novel has a complex and unfinished ending.

The novel is good but the reader is left with the same question as with the other English translations: will we ever understand all of his writings as English readers? Are there points here that we will miss because of the translation to English? I found this quotation that makes that point (from Wikipedia):

"Kafka often made extensive use of a trait special to the German language allowing for long sentences that sometimes can span an entire page. Kafka's sentences then deliver an unexpected impact just before the period--that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved due to the construction of certain sentences in German which require that the verb be positioned at the end of the sentence. Such constructions are not duplicable in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same effect found in the original text."

In any case, this is not as good as "Metamorphosis," and few would expect that it could be, but still it is excellent and is more complex than "The Castle."

Block, the painter, and Leni among others, are strangers who understand the complications of Joseph K's case as well as the details of court operations. The story exist in a state of total chaos, characters come and go for no clear reason, out of the blue, women go crazy over Joseph and then changing on him for no reason, People show concern for him and then become completely indifferent to his plight and an accusation , that he doesn't understand, is made. Joseph doesn't know if it's a crazy nightmare or reality.

The court that has access to any information or place at any time and holds the divine authority to decide everybody's destiny, still conducts its business in weird, dark and suspicious places. Is the court a symbol of the unaccountable bureaucracy that Kafka witnessed or was it the inner world of alienation that Kafka experienced all of his life? Was the first building that Joseph went to for the first court meeting merely a strange, empty, dark place or was it a maze that symbolizes a corrupt society?

When the prison chaplain comments: "...it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary", did he refer to the corrupted legal system or to the crazy world as Kafka saw it?

What does Fraulein Burstner symbolize in Joseph's life? What is the significance of her sudden vague appearance at the end? was she the last connection to life in Joseph's eyes?

Why didn't Joseph fight the two men at the end? Had he given up and wanted to end his emotional torment or was it his longing to discover the ultimate truth?

As is typical of Kafka's works, there are many unanswered questions, but the journey through his works is outstanding and complex. It isn't called Kafkaesque for nothing.

unlike critics who would say that this novel was never finished, I believe that Kafka finished this novel and made the characters and events as random and confusing as possible. Reading the Trial, another Kafka masterpiece, is certainly time well spent.

"The Castle" is a typical work of Kafka. It features an enterprising, stubborn, white-collar protagonist facing insurmountable obstacles who lacks the introspection to see he is a playing a game he cannot win.
"The Castle" is about Joseph K., a Land Surveyor, who comes to the village under a reign of... well, not terror, perhaps bumbling indifference, by the imposing symbol of absurd beauracracy, The Castle. The Castle assigns inept assistants to Joseph, does not allow him to contact them, and worse yet, does not even give him a job, but tells him to "Keep up the good work."
Along the way, Joseph makes the acquaintance of a mysteriously shunned family, takes on a fiancee who may or may not be all that she appears, and encounters a menagerie of cryptic, esoteric characters -- all of whom have their own ideas about the Castle and its vague, shadowy inhabitants.
This is a pretty effective treatise on beauracracy and the frustration of the common person of working hard and getting ahead. But be forewarned: the ending is imminently unsatisfied. Also be certain to try and find a Max Brod translation if possible. The difference is very notable.

This is a marvelous romance with a mystery about a young American orphan, Isabel, who travels to France to find her birth Father.
This is no easy task, having never been acknowledged by her father, and her mother declining to name him. The only clue our heroine has, is her mother's postcard of his home, the Chateau Ferrancolles.
She travels to the Chateau under false pretenses. There her undeniable family resemblence causes some slight consternation amongst her shocked, suspicious relatives.
Isabel, longing for a father and a family, does her best with these cold, uninterested relatives and her supposed, newfound, distant father.
There are dark family secrets, nefarious relatives, cases of mistaken identity and finally a loving relationship for the heroine.
This is a very enjoyable novel with interesting, imperfect characters.
Recommended.

This version, like the original manuscript, ends mid-sentence. Kafka was dying of tuberculosis. An infection secondary to TB developed in his throat, making eating too painful for him, and he died of starvation at a sanatorium near Vienna. A lot of the negative reviews here refer to how unfinished the book seems, or how morbid and dreary. And even good reviews emphasize the bureaucracy primarily as a symbol of social conditions. Kafka, a Czech Jew living through WW I, who had symptoms of hypochondria before he contracted TB, (which was often fatal in those times) spent many years convalescing. He was unable to earn a living to support himself, and virtually unknown as a writer, and probably thinking of death a lot, and his inability to make a living, or stay healthy, or find meaning in his short life. I find this biographical background essential to appreciating the Castle. I understand the bureaucracy of the castle to be a metaphor for illness, as well as for society, and existential angst. Please don't let anyone you know read the book (or review it!) without knowing his background.

With its labyrinthine backdrop and its claustrophobic atmosphere, "The Castle" is, above all, a novel about frustration: irritation at ignorance, exasperation with complacency, and above all, annoyance with bureaucracy.

And it can be frustrating for readers, too. The book was unfinished; it ends mid-sentence; and the new Harman translation (which is the one I read) attempts to restore the book to its raw, unpunctuated state. Because its themes center on the mindlessness of officialdom and the repetitiveness of red tape, Kafka's portrayal can seem mindless and repetitive. (Nowhere is this more apparent than in the scene where K. visits with Burgel, whose interminable monologue lulls K. to sleep. It worked like a charm on me, too, and I had to reread the chapter.)

Yet the book contains passages both memorable and quotable, characters that are recognizable, and mysteries (however unsolved) that can be fascinating. As a result, it's a book best read in small doses to appreciate both the author's dry (and even slapstick) humor and, even more, the work's satirical bite.

The plot, such as it is, can be summarized in a brief description. Called to work as a land surveyor for village, K. arrives only to discover that the request was a mistake, that none of the officials in the Castle will take responsibility for their mistake or meet with him to discuss it, and that the townsfolk neither know nor care what it is that the officials and their secretaries do. In short, nobody gets into the Castle. Instead, K. is given a job as a janitor in a school, falls in love with a barmaid, and attempts to meet with Klamm, the official who has allegedly been assigned to his "case."

The Castle's functionless bureaucrats cannot be said to impede K.'s quest; they are hardly seen during the course of his stay. K.'s frustration is amplified not by their active interference but rather by their negligence and obfuscation. The result is far worse, since K. can't even identify with whom he should be struggling or how he should proceed. The officials and their secretaries are so busy with their own paperwork and routines that they really don't have time to attend to anything else, least of all concern themselves with problems that have nothing to do with the nothing they themselves do.

"True, they say that all of us belong to the Castle," admits a young village woman named Olga, who sympathizes with K.'s pursuit and who describes how the Castle's insouciance destroyed her own family. "But where in all this do you see the influence of the Castle?" K. responds. "It doesn't seem to have intervened yet. What you have told me up to now is nothing more than the mindless timidity of the people." Not fully comprehending his own revelation, K. identifies that the problem lies not in the Castle; instead it lies without.

I wish to offer a friendly retort to reviewer Bob Newman, who states how Kafka would share excerpts of this book with his colleagues and would laugh out loud uproariously - and how this fact demonstrates how distant the 20th-Century American malaise is so distant from that of the same time period in Austria-Hungary. I would agree wih Newman that this is certainly a horrowing aspect of thetext; but it's also one that I participated in also while reading Harman's translation - first while reading the 5th Chapter, here titled "At the Chairman's" (where K. learns that his services as a surveyor are not even needed, but he was called anyway to the job due to a minor oversight, "the minorest of minors", I believe the text reads). I can just feel the steam rising from K.'s arrogantly-laden temple while listening to the hairman's explanation - first amused by it, then slowly becoming frustrated and probably even maddened ... funny stuff !! Maybe I only find this funny because I've never been so unfortunate to have been caught in the crossfire of such an oversight at a Liscense Branch, Court Order, etc. This scene is in no ways the climax of the text, but merely the beginning of the fall into the abyss for K. I hope others reading my retort here are moved to read the text in its entirity.

Hearing about Kafka's work is not enough: you really need to read it and experience it yourself. It's hilarious, and unfortunately all too true.

In this book, a surveyor, named K., arrives in a village and tries to get in to the castle in order to get permission to stay there and do his work, but falls into a quagmire of disfunctional bureaucracy. This may sound like a dreary read, but the book is really very funny, and reminded me too much of the real world. K spends most of the book on a fruitless quest to meet an official named Klamm who might be able to help him get into the castle. I laughed out loud at some of the ridiculous conversations he has with some of the villagers, and later I gasped in amusement and dismay as I learned more about this twisted world.

Kafka never finished writing this book, and the restored text, of which this is a translation, ends in the middle of a sentence. However this doesn't really make it any less satisfying to read. While it is not clear where the last couple of pages are going, just before that there is a long paranoid rant by one of the villagers which is great.

This translation seems to be more accurate than the older, Muir translation. There are some things that sound kind of weird here, but they sound weird in the original too.

Kafka crafts a sometime eerie, sometime funny, but always fascinating work that details the criminal legal system's prosecution/persecution of a "Josef K." The book's famous first sentence ominously forebodes the grinding machine that slowly devours Josef: a nameless, invisible bureaucracy that is omnipotent in its reach and accountable to no one. Although many novels written in the 20th century have appropriated similar versions of totalitarianism (1984, Brave New World, etc.), it should be noted that The Trial provided the template and, if you ask me, continues to stand without peer in its brilliant construction of terror caused by absurdity. Indeed, this book is, unsurprisingly, the prototypical example of the 'Kafkaesque:' feelings of guilt and alienation triggered by menacing forces that are bound by their own impenetrable logic. Anyone interested in 20th century literature ought to do himself or herself a favour and read The Trial, since the Kafkaesque informs so many of the themes and approaches to writing adopted by the century's top stylists.

The translation itself is very fine, and you can read the translator's preface yourself to see what he was aiming for, to recreate the real Kafka and get away from the "Dickensian" (as he calls it) flavor of the Muir translation.... However, reading this I was horrified to find certain passages had been abandoned that I'm too attached to from the older version to give this new one a fair chance. For instance, when K. arrives in the village and sleeps at the Inn, they call the Castle to verify his appointment as Land-Surveyor. There's a paragraph or two about the strange hum on the phone-line "like a thousand voices singing", something like that, that always struck me as so jarring and and surreal and perfect in its placement at the beginning of the book catching you right off guard, -- well, I can't leave it alone. Maybe this is the "purer" version of Kafka to some readers. But going off what another reviewer said here, that Kafka's books grew like a wild plant, sprouts, branches, shoots off in every direction making any conventional finish & completion practically impossible, I feel like, ahem, this has been clipped too much with the editor's shears, ah, if you will. I feel the alternate versions, snippets, unfinished extra chapters, etc. are vital to the work and for that I still prefer the Muir translation, inaccurate as the text itself is. So I would like to see then a new version that includes all the alternate chapters and versions and so on but in this new translation.

So much of what Kafka wrote about sounds like the place that Dilbert works in. Granted it has a different historical reference of early 20th century Prague, but bureaucracy is the same in any time. Beginning with the idea that no one can tell K. why he has been hired, the Castle cannot have made a mistake, we then follow him as he goes down the yellow brick road looking for the White Rabbit.

You have to understand Kafka's life to truly understand his writings. He spent most of his life working as a clerk in an insurance company. He spent the majority of his life living in the post-World War I, Czechoslovakia, in a city that was originally designed to be the provincial capital of part of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy. All of a sudden it is the capital of a very week central european republic. So you have a large establishment, that doesn't have anything to do anymore but keep itself in business.

Up until WWI, most of the Czech elite, spoke and read in German. The only people who spoke Czech (or Slovak) were the illiterate peasants in the countryside. At the time of independence in 1918, there were few if any courses taught in Czech at the University of Prague, and all government business was conducted in German.

Kafka, was a non-practicing Czech Jew who had to learn Yiddish and Hebrew as an adult. He was the ultimate outsider; he spoke the wrong language and didn't practice the wrong religion; but then he didn't practice the right religion. His life, to say the least, was going nowhere fast, and that was only because it was going downhill. Based on descriptions of him by his friends, he was most likely a manic-depressive and had at least two known 'breakdowns'. He was terrible at relations with the opposite sex, having twice been engaged and then having broken them off.

There is a Lewis Carroll/Marx Brothers (not including Karl) flow to his writings; and since it seems to be train-of-thought, you wonder if he was ever on the right one, at least in his own mind.

When you keep in your own mind, that his writings predate movies like Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' or Chalie Chaplin's 'Modern Times' you can see his genius of describing workers as slaves to the system.

Who but some one who worked as an insurance clerk, could really understand the feeling of forelorness of the individual faced with an enormous bureaucracy that was mostly concerned with perpetuating itself. That the book doesn't have a true ending, makes more of an impression that if it had one. It better reflects how things don't always

At times, reading Kafka is comparable to deciphering a Dali painting or viewing an art-house film; that's not to say Kafka's prose is particularly surreal, but rather, slightly detached from reality. There are moments throughout the trial when things border on the peculiar and even the absurd, but unlike, say, The Metamorphosis, he retains some semblance of plausibility here. Reading Kafka is almost like a sensation - much like that one gets well dreaming; although the dream is not reality, for the moments your asleep it SEEMS like reality.

What exactly is the meaning of The Trial? Like Kafka's The Castle, the central theme seems to be bureaucracy, but upon closer inspection the real focus is law. What exactly is law? Who enacts it, enforces it, violates it, and who pays for these violations? Can a man break the law unwittingly? I think what Kafka touches on here - and this is just my own personal analysis, as this novel is wide-open to interpretation - are the sometimes almost all-too-apparent hypocrisies of law, foremost among them, the unquestionable infallibility of law itself. Many of the novels' characters ( perhaps all of them) are inexorably bound by the law - and to the court which enforces it - but not one character, with the exception of the protagonist, challenges or questions the nature of law itself. The more the main character Joseph K. struggles against the law and the charges laid against him, the less progress he makes, and the guiltier he becomes. It is a depressingly oppressive view of people and their place in the moral hierarchy of society.

Kafka refuses to pose the question directly: if man is fallible, and man enacted law, does that not make law fallible, or at the very least, flawed? One could argue that Jewish law is considered infallible, because it is the word of god, so Kafka shies away from such a dilemma. However, a simpler and more correct perspective would be that in Kafka's world, there is no hope, no question of escape. The law simply exists, much like how in The Castle, The Castle and it's subordinates exist, more or less as forces of nature, and to struggle against such forces would be an exercise in futility. This is the precursor to an Orwellian Dystopia.

That's not to say the novel is completely bleak - it contains bits of black humor, and the beginning is rather optimistic. But in Kafka's world, the man who struggles against the system has lost even before he has begun, and in this particular case, the man spends almost the whole of the tale figuring this out.

Now that I have read Metamorphosis and The Castle, I feel that I have been Kafka-ized. I now understand what is meant by Kafkaesque. Definitions of Kafkaesque that I have found include "bureaucracies overpowering people, leaving them with a sense of helplessness". Yes, that fits The Castle; but only if otherwise seemingly intelligent people suspend all rationality and are unable to walk away from their helplessness despite there being no barriers to doing so other than some mysterious hold the Castle seems to have over them, a hold that is never explained. Even K., an outsider who should not have been affected by this senselessness, was incapable of circumventing the ridiculous, if not non-existent, barriers and marching up to the Castle himself. Nothing actually happens in the novel. There is no real plot or action; just people spinning their wheels and going nowhere. Perhaps that fits the definition above re: the Castle (representing bureaucracies) creating a sense of helplessness in the people. Just when you think someone is about to explain something, the next several paragraphs or pages of so-called explanation explain nothing! And what are we to make of the ending where the hotel manager's wife is showing K. her closets full of beautiful gowns? No doubt, some (pseudo)intellectual will try to put great meaning to scenes such as this and maybe they are right. But from comments that I have read by other authors re: The Castle, I don't think that I am alone in wondering what we were supposed to get out of it. If star rankings are based solely on how enjoyable a novel is, then I would have given The Castle two stars. But I don't think that this novel was meant to be "enjoyed" per se. Perhaps it was intended to provoke thought, but about what I am not certain. I now feel compelled to read The Trial. Perhaps I will know more then - you think???

As a philosophical exercise this novel succeeds, as entertainment it's lacking. What I mean is that Kafka's frustration with bureaucracy comes through clearly in this work. It's his nightmare. K, the protagonist has been contracted to do work at the castle, but he cannot get there - no roads lead to the castle, no one can introduce him or take him there, and despite finding a place in the village his ultimate goal is continually thwarted.

I did appreciate how Kafka demonstrates the villagers loyalty to the officials of the castle, even when they didn't understand what the officials did, or why, or how. It's surely a commentary on questioning authority.

But the novel was frustrating and that, I believe is Kafka's intention - to evoke a strong emotional discontentment through a frustrated main character. That's the success of the novel - and it did make me think about the condition of life, being guided like a mule after the carrot on a stick.

I didn't enjoy the novel, but I learned from it and maybe that's the highest compliment of all.

- CV Rick, February 2008

i'm sitting in a cold, lonely room, headphones on, a lamp dimly gleaming on the nightstand next to me. i've just finished harman's translation of the castle, which i picked up from the library after finishing a muir translation i bought for 50 cents.

the novel tells of the struggle of K., who believes that he's been invited to a town to do some land surveying, only to realize upon his arrival that his invitation was the result of a bureaucratic mishap. he wants answers from the officials at the castle that overlooks the town, but that can never happen - how K. deals with this stark reality constitutes the subsequent "action" of the novel.

reading and thinking about this novel, i feel like K himself gazing upon the castle, doomed to forever struggle against forces beyond his control. i've now read this book twice in a month, and i still don't know what it means, and i don't think i ever will, and i still can't understand K's motivations, and i can't comprehend the workings of the castle or the village or the other characters K encounters. i'll let scholars try to pin down these things, because achieving any kind of certainty is not what this novel is about - if you're someone who'd be frustrated by something like this, don't bother reading. (besides - and i'm no philosopher - i think someone like kafka would resist attempts to assign concrete meanings to events, places, and people.)

why does't K just go back to where he came from? why does he try to marry a village girl only a few days after his arrival even though he has a wife and child back at home? who are his new assistants, and what happened to his old assistants? is this village on earth? are the castle officials human? what is happening here?

there are no answers to these questions. and yet - even though the world of the castle is but a blurred reflection of ours - the ways in which they are asked reveals an absolute truth about how our universe works.
i think in many respects, K's unending, doomed struggles to understand his situation and assign meaning to his unfamiliar surroundings mirror our own struggles to not only understand his predicament, but to understand our own lives and perhaps discover the purpose they hold. maybe there's nothing there at the end of our struggles, or maybe there's everything, or maybe we'll be cut off in mid-sentence on the most mundane of days, just like K., simply hoping for one more chance.

in 2001: a space odyssey, arthur c. clarke imagines a world in which the transformation from ape to man was caused by utterly opaque, alien monoliths. despite their central importance to the ascension of humankind, their inner workings and their purpose and their function were mostly hidden, their mystery and necessary knowledge forever obscured. i think the castle is much like one of these monoliths - utterly inscrutable, and yet in the end, absolutely necessary.

I have read the Muir and the Harman translations and I feel the Harman version is a restoration of Kafka's Castle to the english language. Sentences are often long and punctuation sparse, this brings out the intended atmosphere of the novel which is close to surreal. The literary critics have posited numerous interpretations of the Castle but beware about becoming too dogmatic about any of them. This novel defies easy explanation and is purposely enigmatic. K. experiences many setbacks, switchbacks, and confusions on his trail to his goal, even his goal is an enigma to himself. Just as in life when we believe we have the answers disillusion is not far behind, K.'s struggles are thwarted and he thinks he's getting somewhere only to find he must constantly re-assess his position. It is so appropriate that this novel ends in mid sentence.

Probably not the most recommendable place to start for someone unfamiliar with Kafka, but if you've read other works by Kafka and have enjoyed them, you'll need to get around to this one eventually. Personally, I think it's one of the best books I've ever read. It is true that nothing much really happens, in the typical sense, and that the book is distinctly unfinished and probably flawed on a number of levels. But in some senses this only enhances the mysterious nature of the book. It is utterly surreal and ultimately pointless as a conventional narrative, but rather resembles an epic, highly detailed, inherently meaningful, yet hopelessly ambiguous dream. I find this mix and this atmosphere extremely appealing, and I have never seen it in a purer, more innocently perfect form than here. A book full of magic.

The Trial

The Ubiquity and Impersonal-ness of the Tyrannical State

In this haunting and stifling novel, by Kafka, Mr. K, a normal successful banker, who has affairs with beautiful women and is much envied by his colleagues -- at least until he is arrested (on his 30th birthday), where he descends into an impersonal hell, which apparently in the end, was not at all of his own making.

It seems, but is never altogether clear, that K has been betrayed to the faceless authorities by unknown betrayers. Once in the impersonal bureaucratic grinding machine, K seems unable to get out, or to recover. Being lost in a bureaucratic maze is a theme that Kafka has milked to perfection before, as it was also used in his other novels, "Metamorphosis," in particular.

Once he is arrested, the "bill of particulars" of the crime for which he is "being held over" for is never given to him; no judgment is made against him; he waits interminably to be seen by the courts but only tricky lawyer appear to give him information that invariably is useless to his case. His frustration mounts but is never completely resolved. Until in the end, where a priests offers him a parable about a man who waits his whole life to enter the doorway of the law, K seems completely lost. He interprets the parable to mean that the state itself is but one big lie made into the rule of the world.

The novel is scary in the almost imperceptible and seamless way that the faceless state apparatus snags, sucks one into, and then takes over, and entraps Mr. K's life. Kafka makes it seem that it is possible for it to happen to any one in almost any society, including in our "so-called" safe democracy. All one has to do is look at what has happened to many of the innocent people arrested as "suspected terrorists," and who were not allowed to contact their families or see lawyers, some of whom are still kept incommunicado even today. It is a cautionary tale that freedom must be defended everyday, and then defended some more.

Five stars

The Castle is one of those books that forever changes your literary perspective. Kafka's absurd storyline coupled with his predernatural prose and comic genius make for a very entertaining novel. Perhaps the most fascinating part of this book is how fresh and timely it remains. The Castle comments on the utter despair an outsider suffers when confronted with the bureaucratic and totalitarianism regime of a foreign land. Perhaps the most tremendous aspect of this book is relating to the main character K and feeling so utterly hopeful and in turn destitute as he does. Although the book does not exactly have an ending, the price we pay for Kafka's genius is his failure to complete works. I recommend this translation because it seems to capture the essence of Kafka's message. If you've read The Trial or any of Kafka's short stories and enjoyed them, this book is for you. If you've never read Kafka, this book is for you too.

Being the last (and unfinished) work of the brilliant, but very bizarre writer Franz Kafka, this book weaves a strange tale of supposedly autobiographic search and discovery. It is difficult and anguishing to read this book, and I wonder if Kafka would have really wanted it published had he not died before finishing writing it. It feels like a long swim upstream in a cold river, which numbs the senses. But somehow you want to know what happens to the main character, K. Does he succeed in his plans? Is his success also subject to the laws of perception set up in this story? If you can make it through this one, you might have a greater appreciation for Kafka's other works, such as "The Metamorphosis" and "The Trial" (and maybe all other books!). I have to say, his style is certainly unique, but I think I appreciated it much more in his other writings.

The 4 star review for this book is, actually, for Kafka, not the translation. I've read some pretty bad reviews of The Trial's several editions; I think anyone attempting to start their Kafka experience with this novel would give it a terrible review. The text is rough, and of course incomplete, since Kafka never finished a full novel. If one reads his novella The Metamorphosis (one of his longer stories which was published in his lifetime), we can see where he may have gone back and edited The Trial. The story is very compelling, though, and evokes an age which is somewhat parallel to ours...simply that many things go on behind the scenes and outside our field of view, and situations may arise in which we have no idea why we are going through them. The first sentence of The Trial evokes this...we have no idea why Josef K. is being arrested...it's unimportant to the novel. The important part is that he believes he never broke the Law, so we must believe him through his trial experience.

Since I've had experience with the old Muir translations of Kafka's works, I can say that this translation is so much easier to read. German is often treated to a ham-fisted English translation and warrants a certain amount of expression on the part of the translator; this one reads very easily, as if it were written in English to begin with. To conclude, this book would be a great one to get into the mind of Kafka, since it is fragmentary and not yet subject to revision which would undoubtedly have occurred had he not died in 1924. The very helpful translator's preface as well as the incomplete fragments of chapters in the back also aid this in-depth look.

The thing I love about Kafka is how theatrical his style is. He creates these series of grotesquely humorous tableaux, and then steps back and lets the reader make what they will of them. Reading The Trial I felt I could perfectly picture each scene as though I was watching a film, and there's something about this sort of cold objectivity which, when other authors use it, feels secure and safe, but when Kafka does it, feels charged with anxiety and some unspoken menace that's always looming just around the next corner. It reminds me of Gogol's writings more than anything else, where you see the superstitious, old Europe clashing with the malaise-inducing bureaucracy brought about by the new Europe

One morning Joseph K. is arrested. It is never made clear what the charges are, but K. always maintains his innocence, as he grapples with a bureaucracy that slowly strangles his career and consumes his life.
Franz Kafka's 'The Trial' was published posthumously shortly after his death. It was never completely finished and it was unclear how the chapters were to be ordered. It is no surprise then that the plot is somewhat episodic. I had expected the story to be a dystopian nightmare, instead it was blackly humourous as K. deals with the judicial bureaucracy and various absurd situations.
There are many themes and interpretations, but the most obvious (and to me the most relevant) is the power of government and bureaucracy to destroy lives, not through active malice but as an impersonal force like a car driving over a squirrel . Once K. has been arrested he can never be acquitted, he can only hope to delay the final guilty verdict.
'The Trial' is a monumentally important work, that is more relevant than ever as government and its attendant bureaucracies have more impact on our lives with every passing year.

Kafka I maintain is the funniest writer in 20th Century Literature. Seriously. You don't think so - name another great comic writer. A GREAT comic writer. Yes, yes, there are funny writers, such as P.G. Woodehouse, there are writers who ram their books with jokes like an goose liver on the eve of fois gras, but who can match Kafka for sheer, metaphysical, universal funniness. Kafka is Charlie Chaplin's embodiment that life is a tragedy in close up, a comedy in the long shot. Up close, the story of Joseph K is indeed a ghastly one. As Kurt Vonnegut pointed out, the trajectory of this sorry tale is no arcing parabola but a tale of a man who is already in a pretty sorry way at the start and finds his plight gets steadily worse with no respite. What misery! K, imprisoned for an unspecified offence, lurches woefully from one mishap in the penal bureaucracy to another, meeting characters singularly unsuited to helping out in his plight - a painter, a priest. In the end he faces his inevitable fate with the sort of shrug reminiscent of Maimonides. The final page has a scene of black comedy of a pitch not even Samuel Beckett managed to accomplish - the odious knife passing ceremony in front of the victim. Poor Joseph K. Kafka was a proponent of the view that just when you think you are at rock bottom and things can't get any worse - that's the point at which they inevitably will.

Poor Franz.

And then he gained the posthumous reputation as the greatest writer of the Twentieth Century.

What comedy!

Many critics consider The Trial Kafka's best work. As in other main Kafka writings, life in relation to the demands of the society, is an ordeal. In this novel, K is found guilty and prosecuted by a non existent Court with non existent Judges, within the framework of a not revealed Law and without explaining the nature of his crime, Kafka displays his particulary complex visión of the existence of man in a society he deems totalitarian, how man has to fight all his life against the corruption and oppression of the System. The novel reveals Kafka's own psycho, looks like he has conceived a negative view of life and that he also was extremely paranoid. The Trial has many parables and interpretations, that is why it gets worth reading, it is up to every reader to develop his own conclusions.

This book is my favourite Kafka book. It is about a man who is very close to his goal but he can never reach it. There is always something that prevents him from getting there completely and when he believes he is there, he is further away then ever...
I had a strange experience relating to this. I was out driving outside of Vienna, Austria when I saw a roadsign towards a Kafka monument. I stopped my bike and went back to find the place were Kafka died. It was a museum. I tried to open the door, but it was closed. I rang the bell and I knocked on the door, but no-one answered. I could hear voices from inside and I could see people move through the curtains, but nobody would let me in. Then I suddenly realized that this was probably the monument itself; being that close, but never reaching it completely.

Should you read this novel? Is it worth your time? I think if it were written today, Kafka would have had to self-publish it. As it was, however, it was an unpublished, unfinished work, not unlike David Foster Wallace's The Pale King, or Michael Hastings' The Last Magazine. It was published after Kafka died, and he had left instructions for it, and everything else he had written, to be burned. Was he kidding? What is The Trial? It seems to me to be two works in one - one a farcical slapstick comedy, the other a metaphor for the absurdity of life, as relevant today, maybe more so, as when Kafka wrote it. In the beginning I was unimpressed. My first note, written on page 15 says: *seems like a bad play - boring me.* Further on, page 42-43, I wrote: *K. is a stupid idiot--like Kafka. A stream of consciousness/imagination. A flight of fantasy w/no purpose other than for his own amusement.* Then on page 45, I wrote: *A cartoon - the Three Stooges, or Charlie Chapman.* On page 72 I scribbled: *Alice in Wonderland.* But I kept reading, by now having gotten into the rhythm of the thing, writing on page 105: *so typically Kafkaesque.* I now had a better understanding of what Wallace meant in Infinite Jest, when Hal relates his experience with the grief counselor as "Kafkaesque." Wallace is referencing Josef K.'s experience in The Trial.
And then Boom! All of a sudden, on page 112, K.'s experience became mine, or mine his. I, me, I put myself on trial ... and it is the protracted trial. "A single hangman could replace the entire court." (pg. 154) Yes! That's it! I thought. However, "the trial must be kept constantly spinning within the tight circle to which it's artificially restricted." Yep. And there is wisdom, also; and my thoughts of the way things are, are so similar, here now, 90 years later. " ... it's often better to be in chains than to be free." (pg.190) Uh-huh. "The correct understanding of a matter and misunderstanding the matter are not mutually exclusive." (pg. 219) Chew on that.
And finally, in the Fragments section: "but K. could not change his behavior; he succumbed to self-deception ... the most disheartening practical experience taught him nothing, and if he failed at a thing ten times, he thought he could succeed on the eleventh try ... ." That sentiment, today, is thought to define insanity.
This novel depressed me.