"The Castle" by Franz Kafka. Castle, Franz Kafka - “I am a philologist, journalist, I studied Kafka’s literature far from an amateur level

You are not from the Castle, you are not from the Village. You are nothing.
Franz Kafka, "The Castle"

Franz Kafka's unfinished novel “The Castle,” recognized as one of the main books of the 20th century, remains a mystery to this day. Since its publication in 1926, a variety of interpretations have followed each other: from consideration of the conflict of the novel in a social key (the bitter struggle of the individual with the bureaucratic apparatus) to psychoanalytic interpretations of the plot, which, according to a number of researchers, reflects Kafka’s complex relationship with his father and fiancées and the surrounding world.

On a separate shelf is the novel by existentialists, who saw in Kafka a forerunner who first spoke about the tragedy of existence and the existential loneliness of man. To say that any of the interpretations is correct is to reduce the immense novel to a particularity. Thus, the French writer and philosopher Roger Garaudy wrote about Kafka’s novels:

At most, he can hint at a lack, the absence of something, and Kafka's allegory, like some of the poems of Mallarmé or Reverdy, is allegory of absence<…>. There is no possession, there is only being, being that requires the last breath, suffocation. His response to the assertion that it may have owned, but did not exist, was only a trembling and a beating heart<…>. Incompleteness is his law.

All this is generally understandable. But there is another way of looking at the novel, which considers the complex relationship of the hero K. with the Castle as a projection of a person’s relationship with God. It is this interpretation that he examines in his amazing book “Reading Lessons. Kama Sutra of the Scribe” by literary critic, essayist and profound critic Alexander Genis. Why do we suggest reading it? Genis is convinced that the question of God is somehow present in every literary work, even if God himself is not in it. It is through this prism that he looks at Kafka’s “Castle,” helping us look at the brilliant novel (and all literature) from a completely different angle. And it's interesting, I have to tell you. So go ahead.

But if you can’t write about God, you can read about it. We can read Him into every text and subtract it from any<…>. Even the absence of God cannot prevent such tactics.

So, Franz Kafka, “The Castle” and the problem of God.

Talking about God

Reviewing the book "Mr. Fitzpatrick's Thoughts on God," Chesterton noted that it would be much more interesting to read "God's Thoughts on Fitzpatrick."

It’s hard to argue with this, because there’s nothing to write about God. After all, essentially nothing is known about Him, the only one with a capital “H”: He is on the other side of being. Since God is eternal, He has no biography. Because He is everywhere, He has no home. Since He is alone, He has no family (we will remain silent about the Son for now). Since God is obviously greater than our ideas about Him (not to mention experience), everything we know about the divine is human.

But if you can’t write about God, you can read it. We can read Him into every text and subtract it from any - as Salinger’s heroes did:

They sometimes look for the creator in the most unimaginable and inappropriate places. For example, in radio advertising, in newspapers, in a damaged taxi meter. In a word, literally anywhere, but always with complete success.

Even the absence of God cannot prevent such tactics. If He doesn’t exist for the author, then we want to know why and we won’t rest until the book explains to us the gap at the most interesting place. After all, literature, and indeed humans, have no more exciting activity than getting out of ourselves and getting to know the unknowable. Even without knowing anything about the otherworldly, we definitely use it. Like an ax under a ship's compass, it changes the route and abolishes maps. It is not surprising that, striving for inaccessible, and perhaps non-existent knowledge, we hope to find in books what we could not cope with in life.

In vain, of course. Everything that is possible has already been told to us, but those who know for sure always inspire doubt. It would seem that the easiest way to read about God is where it’s supposed to be, but I’ve never succeeded. At university, I did worst in scientific atheism, but only because the Law of God was not in the curriculum. God, like sex, avoids direct words, but every page, including the erotic one (“Song of Songs”), benefits from always speaking about Him and using equivocates.

How Kafka did it. He created the agnostic canon, on which I have been growing my doubts since the fifth grade. I remember the day my father returned with the spoils - a plump black volume with stories and "The Trial". In 1965, getting Kafka was more difficult than getting a trip abroad. Although we didn't yet know that they were one and the same, the aura of mystery and halo of prohibition inspired awe, and I gasped when my father swung his signature on page 17, intended, he explained, for the library stamp. Since then, he may not have opened Kafka, but he certainly never parted with him. This fetish of the old - bookish - time was inherited from me, and now the volume stands next to the others.

Now buying Kafka is not a trick, the trick is always to figure it out. However, judging by how many books have been written about him, this is not so difficult. Like any parable, Kafka's text is fruitful for interpretation. One thing is said, another is meant. The difficulties begin with the fact that we do not fully understand not only the second, but also the first. As soon as we are convinced of the correctness of our interpretation, the author turns away from it.

Under Soviet rule, it was easier for the reader: “We were born,” as Bakhchanyan said, “to make Kafka come true.” I knew this aphorism long before I became friends with its author. Then everyone thought that Kafka wrote about us. It was a well-known world of a soulless office that demanded compliance with rules known only to it.

On the eve of the death of the USSR, I came to Moscow. There were two Americans standing in line to meet the customs officer—a newbie and an experienced one. The first one came too close to the window and was shouted at.

“Why,” he asked, “not draw a line on the floor so that you know where you can stand and where you can’t?”

“As long as this trait is in the heads of officials,” said the second, “it is in their power to decide who is guilty and who is not.”

Kafka talks about it this way: It is extremely painful when you are governed by laws that you do not know.

What we (and certainly I) didn’t understand was that Kafka didn’t think the situation was fixable or even wrong. He did not rebel against the world, he wanted to understand what it was trying to tell him - through life, death, illness, war and love: In a person's struggle with the world, you must be on the side of the world.. At first, in this duel, Kafka assigned himself the role of a second, but then he took the side of the enemy.

Only after accepting his choice are we ready to begin reading a book that tells as much about God as we can bear.

Lock, - Auden said, our Divine Comedy.

K. heads to the Village to hire himself into the service of Duke Westwest, who lives in the Castle. But, although he was hired, he was never able to start it. Everything else is the intrigue of K., trying to get closer to the Castle and gain its favor. In the process, he meets the residents of the Village and the employees of the Castle, which neither the first nor the second helped him get into.

In the retelling, the absurdity of the enterprise is more noticeable than in the novel. While describing the twists and turns extremely accurately and in detail, Kafka omits the main thing - motives. We don’t know why K. needs the Castle, or why the Castle needs K. Their relationship is an initial reality that cannot be disputed, so we just have to find out the details: who is K. and what is the Castle?

K. – land surveyor. Like Adam, he does not own the earth, like Faust, he measures it. A scientist and official, K. is superior to the villagers, their works, worries and superstitions. K. is educated, intelligent, understanding, selfish, self-centered and pragmatic. He is overwhelmed by his career, people for him are pawns in a game, and K. goes to the goal - albeit unclear - without disdaining deception, temptation, and betrayal. K. is vain, arrogant and suspicious, he is like us, but you never like an intellectual.

It's worse that we see the Castle through his eyes and know as much as he knows. And this is clearly not enough. You are terribly ignorant of our affairs here,- they tell him in the Village, for K. describes the Castle in the only system of concepts accessible to him. Having adopted Christianity, European pagans could not recognize God as anyone other than the king. Therefore, they even painted Christ in royal robes on the cross. K. is a hero of our time, so he portrays the higher power as a bureaucratic apparatus.

No wonder the Castle is disgusting. But if he is hostile to man, then why does no one except K. complain? And why does he strive for it so much? Unlike K., the Village doesn't ask the Castle questions. She knows something that is not given to him, and this knowledge cannot be conveyed. You can only come to it yourself. But if there are many roads from the Castle to the Village, there is not a single one to the Castle: The more closely K. peered there, the less he saw and the deeper everything sank into darkness.

The castle is, of course, Heaven. More precisely, like Dante’s, the entire zone of the supernatural, otherworldly, metaphysical. Since we can understand the unearthly only by analogy with the human, Kafka supplies the highest power with hierarchy. Kafka wrote it out with that scrupulous care that amused his friends so much when the author read chapters of the novel to them. Their laughter did not offend Kafka at all.

“His eyes smiled,” recalled Felix Welch, a close friend of the writer, “humor permeated his speech. It was felt in all his comments, in all his judgments.”

We are not used to thinking of Kafka's books as funny, but other readers, such as Thomas Mann, read them that way. In a certain sense, "The Castle" is truly divine comedy, full of satire and self-irony. Kafka laughs at himself, at us, at K., who is able to describe the highest reality only through the lower and familiar.

The career ladder in the “Castle” begins with obedient laymen, among whom the righteous rescuers from the fire department stand out. Then come the servants of the officials, whom we call priests. Having divided their lives between the Castle and the Village, they behave differently at the top than at the bottom, because the laws of the Castle in the Village are no longer applicable. Above the servants is an endless series of angelic officials, among whom there are many fallen ones - too often they limp, as befits demons.

The pyramid is crowned by God, but Kafka mentions Him only on the first page of the novel. Count Westwest and I no longer meet. And, as the most radical – Nietzschean – interpretation of the novel says, it is clear why: God died. Therefore, the Castle, as K. first saw it, did not make itself felt by the slightest glimmer of light. That's why flocks of crows circled above the tower. Therefore the Castle none of the visitors like it, and the locals live poorly, sadly, in the snow.

The death of God, however, did not stop the activities of his apparatus. The castle is like the city of St. Petersburg in the middle of the Leningrad region: the former government has died, but this news has not yet reached the provinces from the capital. And it’s not easy to accept. God cannot die. He can turn away, withdraw, become silent, limiting himself, as the Enlightenment persuaded Him, to creation, and leaving its consequences to the mercy of our difficult fate. We don't know why this happened, but Kafka knows and explains the disaster.

The causes of the disaster are revealed by the inserted episode with Amalia, from K.’s point of view, but central to the history of the Village. She rejected the Castle's claims to her honor and insulted the messenger who brought her the good news. By refusing to connect with the Castle, Amalia rejected the share of the Virgin Mary, did not accept her martyrdom, did not submit to the Castle’s higher plan for the Village, and thereby stopped divine history, depriving it of a key event. Amalia's terrible punishment was the silence of the Castle and the revenge of the villagers left without grace.

K., preoccupied with his trade with the Castle, cannot appreciate the tragedy of the world, which missed the chance of salvation. But Kafka, acutely aware of the depth of our fall, considered it retribution for an unmade sacrifice.

Probably we - he said - suicidal thoughts born in the head of God.

Is it possible to learn more about God from Kafka than we knew before reading him?

Certainly! But not because Kafka multiplies theological hypotheses, changes established interpretations, updates theological language and gives the eternal actual names and nicknames. Kafka's main thing is the provocation of truth. He questions her, hoping to snatch from the world as much truth as it can reveal to him.

You are stroking the world, - he said to the young writer, instead of grabbing it.

Franz Kafka (lived 1883-1924) worked on his last work, the novel The Castle, for several months in 1922. The book was published in 1926, after the death of its creator, and remained unfinished. The story of a certain K., who declared himself a land surveyor and for six days wandered through the labyrinth of roads of the Village, which never led him to the Castle, has no ending. The seventh day for K. will never come, despite the attempt of Max Brod - interpreter, publisher, executor and friend of Kafka - to offer a version of the end of this work, allegedly told to him by the writer himself: on the seventh day, the hero, exhausted from a fruitless struggle, overtakes death on that the moment when news was received from the Castle that he was allowed to remain in the Village.

The very attempt of the publisher to offer some kind of ending to an unfinished book is nothing out of the ordinary. There are examples of this in world literature. However, in the case of Kafka and the novel “The Castle,” recognized as one of the main books of the 20th century, such an intention is inevitably connected with the central problem of the work of the Austrian writer - with the problem of its understanding, interpretation, the problem of finding the road that leads to the Castle. The plot of the work is very simple and at the same time complex - not because of the twisted moves and intricate stories, but because of the parable-like nature, parabolism, and symbolic ambiguity. The dreamlike unsteady artistic world of Kafka absorbs the reader, drawing him into a recognizable and unfamiliar space. Each new reading of “The Castle” is a new drawing of the path along which the reader’s consciousness wanders through the labyrinth of the novel.

Kafka’s work in general is extremely difficult to systematize in any way and to the desire to give “final”, “final” answers to the questions posed in it.

The diversity and diversity of approaches to his books is surprising and even sometimes annoying; What seems strange and inexplicable is the inability of Kafka’s interpreters to “converge” on one point, to at least in some approximation indicate the semantic core of the novel.

Professional readers of Kafka have long noted the metaphorical essence of “The Castle” and its increased allegorical quality.

The situation in which the residents of the Village find themselves is not clear to the reader from the point of view of the laws of the real social structure, has no visible origins, and stems rather from some kind of implicit fear, even horror of the Castle, of its absolute power.

Not only is the behavior of K. and other characters in the story illogical, but the conversations they have are also illogical. The semantic relationship between question and answer is constantly broken: K. is surprised that in this Village there is “a Castle” at all, and immediately announces to his interlocutor that he is “the surveyor whom the Count called to him.” He introduces himself over the phone as “the old assistant surveyor,” and when the telephone voice from the Castle does not accept this explanation, he tries to find out: “So who am I?”

Kafka himself, with all his numerous self-testimonies about the painstaking and thoughtful work on his works, emphasized that it was precisely “clairvoyant” creativity, writing-insight (the short story “The Verdict” was written over several night hours, as if under the dictation of “voices”) and there is true writing. As you know, the clairvoyant artist is largely addressed not to the modern reader, but to the reader of the future. The readership and professional art criticism, in turn, often respond to this challenge from the clairvoyant artist with denial, rejection, or complete inattention to his art. A similar thing happened to a large extent with Kafka, although famous and recognized during his lifetime by many prominent German-speaking writers (he was known and appreciated by Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Hermann Hesse), but completely unnoticed by a wide readership and literary criticism. There is no prophet in his own country, but there is no prophet in his own time, in his own era. Prophecies and clairvoyant revelations of the artist are often perceived by contemporaries either as foolishness, eccentricity, madness, as baseless claims to sacredness, or as unprofessionalism, falling outside the range of tasks and forms of the artistic convention of a given era.

Kafka began to be revered and read as a prophet, a clairvoyant only after a considerable time had passed. Due to the special polysemy of his art, oriented towards symbols, towards “meaningless transcendence”, several generations of readers “read” in his works the meaning that is revealed to them in application to the problems of their own era, potentially, probably contained in artistic images, but sometimes implicit and for the artist himself. And in this sense, the perception of the novel “The Castle” as Kafka’s prediction of power practices and hierarchical relations of a totalitarian state of a fascist or communist type was one of the extremely common reader approaches to the work.

A number of interpretations of the novel are directly related to those systems of ideas about the world that, as one can assume with some degree of certainty, were not the basis for Kafka’s worldview - we are talking primarily about different versions of the psychoanalytic explanation of “The Castle”.

When looking at the novel “The Castle” in the context of the work of the Austrian writer in the early 1920s. it is possible to turn to one of the metaphorical series, which Kafka occupied precisely in these years as part of his understanding of his own creative position and is actively used (in contrast to his previous works) in his short stories. We are talking about the artist’s metaphor, about Kafka’s characters, which he places in the situation of an art producer, and this situation is presented as quite

grotesque (the short stories “The Singer Josephine, or the People of Mouse” and “The Artist of Hunger”, in another Russian translation - “The Hunger”), and as potentially containing many of Kafka’s important meanings and opinions about art in general.

Josephine, the chief singer of the Mouse People, is endowed with all the habits and rules of behavior of a bohemian creature, and although her voice is extremely weak - she squeaks rather than whistles - due to the existing unspoken agreement among the Mouse People, her squeaking is recognized as an outstanding art of singing, with all associated sociocultural functions and conventions. Extremely curious in this short story, which is also quite “autobiographical” and testifies to Kafka’s constant doubts about the meaning and significance of his work, is the metaphorical situation of stirrup art - for example, new painting of the beginning of the last century (Malevich’s Black Square) - in which the mitral The convention of artistry begins to play a role, in its extreme expression it says: “A work of art includes any work that, along with its author, is perceived and recognized as such by at least one other person.”

In the short story “The Artist of Hunger,” the central character demonstrates to the world the amazing art of fasting for many days and even weeks. The special gift of this person constitutes for him his only asset and the complete meaning of life. The hungry man is constantly improving in his art, reaching amazing heights in it, but the longer he is able to abstain from food, the less he arouses interest among the public, to whom art becomes boring and seems overly monotonous due to its extreme “purity”. In the moment before his death, sulfur reveals to the horsemaster of the circus in which he performed the meaning of the existence of the “art of hunger”: “I will never find food that suits my taste.” No other activity in this world is suitable for an artist, not to his taste.

Writing and creativity for Franz Kafka are an absolute life task. “I have no literary interests. I consist entirely of literature,” he wrote. The story of the land surveyor in the novel “The Castle” from this perspective can also be viewed as the story of an artist in modern myrtle, or rather, a metaphor, a myth about the artist and the world around him. The land surveyor's relationship with the Castle, with the authorities, as well as with the Village, with the crowd, is a relationship of incessant struggle, and a struggle doomed to defeat. The hero fights both against the Castle and for his existence in this environment.

Franz Kafka is one of the outstanding German-language writers of the 20th century. "The Castle" is the book that made him world famous. Like many of the writer’s works, the novel is imbued with absurdism, anxiety and fear of the outside world. Let's talk about this non-trivial creation in more detail.

About the product

Kafka began writing the novel The Castle in 1922, but that same year he decided to stop working on it. The work remained unfinished, and in this form it was published in 1926.

In a letter to his friend Max Brod, Kafka wrote that he deliberately gave up writing the book and no longer intended to continue it. In addition, he asked his friend to destroy all rough notes after his death. But Brod did not fulfill his friend’s last wish and kept the manuscript.

Franz Kafka, “The Castle”: summary. Welcome to the absurd!

The main character is a young man of about thirty named K. Late in the winter evening, he arrives in the Village and stops at an inn. K. goes to bed, but in the middle of the night he is woken up by Schwarzer, the son of the Castle caretaker. The boy reports that no one without the count’s permission can live in his domain, which includes the Village. The hero explains that he is a land surveyor and arrived here at the invitation of the count. Schwartz calls the Castle, where they confirm the guest's words and also promise to keep him at bay.

Kafka leaves his hero in absolute solitude. "The Castle" (the contents of which are presented here) immerses the reader in an absurdist reality that is impossible to resist.

In the morning K. decides to go to the Castle. But the main road does not lead to the goal, but turns to the side. The hero has to go back. There are already “assistants” waiting for him, who have absolutely no understanding of the work of land surveyors. They inform you that you can only enter the Castle with permission. K. starts calling and demanding that he be given permission. But the voice on the phone replies that he is denied this forever.

Guest from the Castle

Kafka conveys his worldview in his works. “The Castle” (the summary serves as proof of this) is permeated with gloom and hopelessness. Man is given the most insignificant place in it; he is powerless and defenseless.

The messenger Barnabas appears, differing from other local residents in his openness and sincerity, and conveys a message to K. from the Castle. It reports that K. was hired, and the head of the Village was appointed his boss. The hero decides to get down to work and stay away from officials. Over time, he will be able to become “one of his own” among the peasants and earn the favor of the count.

Barnabas and his sister Olga help K. get into the hotel where the gentlemen who come to the Village from the Castle stay. It is forbidden for outsiders to spend the night here, and the place for K. is only in the buffet. This time the hotel was visited by the official Klamm, about whom all the inhabitants of the Village had heard, but no one had ever seen him.

Franz Kafka gives his hero the same powerless allies as his assistants. “The Castle” (a brief summary will help you get a general impression of the work) describes the clash of powerless but reasonable people with representatives of the authorities, whose actions are completely meaningless.

An important person in the hotel is the barmaid Frida. This is a very sad and plain-looking girl with a “pathetic little body.” But in her gaze, K. read superiority and the ability to resolve any complex issues. Frida shows K. Klamm through a secret peephole. The official turns out to be a clumsy, fat gentleman with sagging cheeks. The girl is the lover of this man, and therefore has great influence in the Village. K. admires Frida's willpower and invites her to become his mistress. The barmaid agrees and they spend the night together. In the morning, Klamm calls Frida demandingly, but she replies that she is busy with a land surveyor.

No surveyor needed

Even love is given a depraved and absurd character by Kafka (“The Castle”). The summary illustrates this perfectly. K. spends the next night at the inn with Frida, almost in the same bed, along with assistants from whom it is impossible to get rid of. The hero decides to marry Frida, but first he wants the girl to let him talk to Klamm. But the barmaid and the hostess of the inn tell K. that this is impossible. Klamm, the man from the Castle, will not talk to a simple surveyor, who is an empty place. The hostess is very sorry that Fritz preferred the “blind mole” to the “eagle”.

Gardena tells K. that about 20 years ago Klamm called her to his place several times. Since then, the Mistress has kept the scarf and cap he gave him, as well as a photo of the courier who invited her to the first meeting. With the knowledge of Klamm, Gardena got married, and for the first years she talked with her husband only about the official. For the first time, K. encounters such a close intertwining of personal and work life.

The hero learns from the headman that he received the news of the land surveyor’s arrival many years ago. Then the headman sent to the Castle and said that no one in the Village needed a land surveyor. The answer probably went to another department, but we can’t talk about this mistake, since mistakes don’t happen in the office. Later, the control authority recognized the mistake, and one of the officials fell ill. And shortly before K.’s arrival, an order finally came to refuse to hire a land surveyor. The appearance of the hero brought to naught the many years of work of officials. But the document cannot be found.

Elusive Klamm

Having served as an official himself, he saw the absurdity of Kafka's bureaucratic apparatus. The castle (the summary presented here describes it in some detail) becomes an image of merciless and senseless clerical power.

Frida forces K. to get a job as a school watchman, although the teacher tells him that the Village needs a watchman just like a land surveyor. The hero and Frida have nowhere to live, and they temporarily settle in a classroom.

K. goes to the hotel to meet Klamm. Pepi, Frida's successor, suggests where the official can be found. The hero lies in wait for him in the yard in the cold for a long time, but Klamm manages to slip past. The official’s secretary demands that K. undergo an “interrogation”, on the basis of which a protocol will be drawn up. But due to the fact that Klamm himself never reads such papers, K. refuses and runs away.

Barnabas conveys to the heroes a message from Klamm, in which the official approves of his surveying work. K. decides that this is a mistake and wants to explain everything. But Barnabas is convinced that Klamm will not even listen to this.

K. sees how his bride has changed over the days of their marriage. Closeness with the official gave Frida “insane charm,” but now she is fading. The girl suffers and is afraid that K. might give her to Klamm if he demands. In addition, she is jealous of the hero’s sister Olga.

Olga's story

Kafka clearly separates his heroes. “The Castle” (the brief summary partly allows us to convey this) is a work where two worlds are clearly drawn. This is the world of officials and ordinary people. The characters are similarly divided. Heroes from ordinary people have feelings, characters, they are alive and full-blooded. And those who are connected with the office lose their human features; there is something articulated and unreal in their appearance.

Olga undoubtedly belongs to the first group. And Kafka even introduces the reader to the story of her life. About three years ago, at a village festival, her younger sister Amalia was seen by the official Sortini. The next morning a letter came from him ordering the girl to come to the hotel. Amalia angrily tore up the message. But never before in the Village had anyone dared to push away an official. This offense became a curse on their entire family. Nobody came to my father, the best shoemaker, with orders. In desperation, he began to run after officials and beg them for forgiveness, but no one listened to him. The atmosphere of alienation grew, and eventually the parents became disabled.

People were afraid of the Castle. If the family managed to hush up the matter, they would go out to their fellow villagers and say that everything had been settled. Then the family was immediately accepted back. But the family members suffered and did not leave home, so they were excluded from society. Only Barnabas, as the most “innocent,” is allowed to communicate. It is important for the family that the boy officially works in the Castle. But there are no documents about this. Barnabas himself is not sure of this, so he performs the service poorly. Olga, in order to obtain information about her brother, is forced to sleep with the servants of officials.

Meeting with officials

Frida, tired of the instability and exhausted by uncertainty about K.’s loyalty, decides to return to the buffet. She invites Jeremiah, the hero’s assistant, with her, with whom she hopes to start a family.

Erlanger, Klamm's secretary, agrees to host K. in his hotel room at night. A whole line forms in front of his room. Everyone is glad to be here, since the secretary deigned to take personal time to receive them. Many officials receive petitioners during meals or in bed. In the corridor, our hero accidentally meets Frida and makes attempts to win her back. But the girl accuses K. of cheating with girls from a “shameful family”, and then runs away to Jeremiah.

After a conversation with Frida, the hero cannot find Erlanger’s number and goes to the first one he comes across. The official Burgel lives there and was delighted at the arrival of the guest. K., exhausted and tired, collapses on the official’s bed and falls asleep while the owner of the room discusses official procedures. But soon Erlangre calls him to his place. The secretary reports that Klamm cannot work normally when it is not Frieda who serves him beer. If K. can get the girl back to work at the buffet, it will greatly help him in his career.

Ending

The novel “The Castle” ends. Kafka did not finish it, so it is impossible to say how the author intended it to end; one can only describe the moment at which the story ended.

The hostess, having learned that K. was received by two officials at once, allows him to stay overnight in the beer hall. Pepi laments that Klamm did not like her. The hero thanks the Hostess for the overnight stay. The woman begins to talk about her outfits, remembers that K. once made a remark to her, which really hurt her. The hero maintains a conversation, revealing knowledge of fashion and good taste. The hostess shows interest and admits that K. can become her adviser in matters of wardrobe. She promises to call him every time new outfits arrive.

Soon the groom Gerstecker offers the hero a job in the stable. He hopes that through K. he himself will be able to achieve Erlanger’s favor. Gerstecker invites the hero to spend the night at his home. The groom's mother, reading a book, gives K. her hand and invites him to sit next to her.

Quotes

At the very center of the story, Kafka breaks off his work (“The Castle”). The quotes below will help you get an idea of ​​the style and language of the novel:

• “Administrative decisions are timid, like young girls.”
• “The amount of work does not at all determine the degree of importance of the matter.”
• “He played with his dreams, dreams played with them.”
• “Man acts bolder in his ignorance.”

Analysis

This novel is considered among critics to be the most mysterious of all that Kafka wrote. “The Castle” (we will now consider the analysis) supposedly touches on the theme of man’s path to God. But since the work has not been completed, there is no way to be sure of this. The only thing that can be said for sure is the presence of bureaucratic satire. As for the genre specifics, this is more of an allegorical and metaphorical text than a fantastic one.

It is impossible to understand where exactly the events are unfolding. There is nothing that could even indicate a country. Therefore, it is generally accepted that the images of the Village and the Castle are also allegorical. The depicted world exists according to its own absurd laws. Kafka was a person “painfully experiencing his inability to establish beneficial contact with the outside world.” This gloomy feeling is reflected in all the writer’s works; we see it in “The Castle”.

The hero finds himself in a world in which he has no place, but he is forced to somehow adapt to the chaotic reality.

Franz Kafka, “The Castle”: reviews

Today the writer is very popular, especially among young people who read. Therefore, it is not worth talking about the relevance of his works - since interest does not fade, it means that the subject remains in demand. As for “The Castle,” the book is highly rated by readers. Many focus their attention precisely on ridiculing bureaucratic orders, which in our society sometimes reach the same absurd proportions as in the time of the writer. It is not surprising that this side of clerical life was described so well by Kafka, who worked in this field for a long time. “The Castle,” reviews of which are mostly positive, nevertheless leaves readers with a gloomy aftertaste and a feeling of hopelessness. Some misinterpret the novel, perceiving it as an “ode to bureaucracy” rather than a satire on the power of officials. The latter is not surprising, since the novel is quite difficult to interpret. And incompleteness only complicates understanding.

Summing up

Kafka (“The Castle”) raises the idea of ​​the meaninglessness and absurdity of existence in his novel. A summary of the chapters further convinces us of this. By the way, such topics were very relevant for the literature of the 20th century. Many European writers turned to her, but only Kafka was so depressingly gloomy. The monologues and actions of his characters are often meaningless and illogical, and the chaos going on around them creates an oppressive feeling of the futility of existence. Nevertheless, Kafka's work is extremely popular among readers, and interest in him does not fade at all. And we should not forget that the writer made a significant contribution to the development of such a well-known movement as existentialism.

“Besides, I’m afraid that life in the Castle will not be for me. I want to always feel free.” F. Kafka “The Castle” Kafka needs six incomplete days and five nights that surveyor K. spends in the Village to describe the world “ Castle", describe it quite fully and concisely, so that in fact there are no questions left after reading it. That is, minor technical issues remain, but this does not change the essence of the matter. This is usually bad, because if after reading there is no desire to think about the work, ask yourself questions, delve into the author’s secret (that’s what you want to call the notorious image of the author, which appears here and there in the text), re-read some places to better to figure it out - the work passed by, either due to its lightness, or a total discrepancy with your own inner world. But the Castle is written amazingly. It is difficult to read, boring in places, but does not allow you to stop reading or just relax and turn the page. He seems to push you to think again and again with his endless monologues (after all, in fact, the dialogues of “The Castle” constantly turn into monologues or a series of sequential monologues). Therefore, when the author leaves you on the threshold of the next monologue that Gerstecker’s mother starts, you get the feeling that nothing will ever fundamentally change and that everything bad that should have happened to the land surveyor has already happened, what happens next is not important. In the hotel, where the servants gather, each of whom is a former resident of the same village, the faces are different. “They were dressed cleaner, in gray-yellow, coarse fabric dresses, with wide jackets and tight-fitting pants. These were all small people, very similar at first glance to each other, with flat, bony, but ruddy faces.” rumors there are much more powerful ones, above whom there are even more powerful ones. It is not surprising that the count himself is lost in this rapidly growing brilliance, merging in a kind of dazzling radiance of nobility. There, behind the radiance, the completely unattainable and incomprehensible count leads his unattainable and incomprehensible life. Therefore, later in the novel the Count is never mentioned; a certain impersonal “gentleman” is used to identify the senior residents of the Castle. This is exactly what a land surveyor calls officials in his thoughts. And indeed, it is fair: having agreed to remain in the count's service, he turned into a dependent person, whose position, in addition, is not defined, and according to the logic of these places, this means that it is extremely low, next to the peasants, and for him everyone is a boss who holds at least some position. The very description of the case about the arrival of the land surveyor is extremely verbose and tedious; it is this verbosity that creates the impression of something powerful and cruel, enslaving a person. The speeches of all the inhabitants of the Village are verbose and tiresome, as soon as they concern the Castle and the organization of life. And work in the Castle. This is how Olga describes her brother’s visits to the offices: “Does he actually serve in the Castle?” we ask ourselves; yes, of course, he visits the offices, but are the offices part of the Castle? And even if the offices belong to the Castle, then those Are these offices where Barnabas is allowed to enter? He visits the offices, but they are only part of the offices, then there are barriers, and behind them are other offices. And it’s not that he is directly forbidden to go further, but how can he go further, since he is. already found his bosses, and they agreed with him and sent him home... But you should not imagine these barriers as certain boundaries. Barnabas always tells me about this. There are barriers in the offices where he goes, but there are. the barriers that he passes, and their appearance is exactly the same as those through which he has never been, so there is no need to assume in advance that the offices behind those barriers are significantly different from the offices where Barnabas has already been.” The grotesque movement of speech in a circle, the constant repetition of the words “office” and “barriers” create the impression of a colossal colossus in which a person gets lost. The enormity of the official apparatus is akin to a string of offices lost in an endless spiral directed somewhere upward. As a result, driven by circumstances, the lack of housing and a decent job, K. is ready to admit that he is an insignificance: “you have to deal with the most insignificant people like me, because I only have the right to be here, in the buffet, and not in other places,” as he says to Pepi. Totalitarianism in the management of public life,and relatedWithhim simplificationsocial relations, their clear regulation. The role of rituals in the organization of traditional societies is enormous: removing a hat, kneeling, the right to sit or stand with the overlord instill in a person a clear awareness of his capabilities, and thereby strengthen the system. Totalitarian regimes of no less traditional societies are dependent on rituals: addressing each other as “comrade”, “heil”, praising the leader, mass rallies and demonstrations, the only correct presentation of events within the framework of developed traditions. We find all this in Kafka’s novel in huge quantities. The right to speak with this or that official, endless praises addressed to Klamm, if it comes to him in any context, rules and duties, duties and rules...WITH creation of a powerful bureaucratic apparatus of the patrimonial type (and this is precisely the type of bureaucracy in Russia, especially at the present time - it is not effective, but influential, because it does not perform the functions of a rational bureaucracy, but the functions of representation and socialization of management ideas). Moreover, to the social bureaucracy is added the party bureaucracy, that is, the ideological one, which simultaneously governs the country. In ancient empires, its analogue was the priestly bureaucracy.ABOUTworship of masters coupled with deification , so correctly expressed by Kafka and which actually existed in the empires of the last century. In ancient Egypt, the pharaoh was deified. The almighty Stalin and Hitler were so powerful that they were essentially sacred. And their adoration was incredible: people died with the name of Stalin on their lips. The isolation from ordinary residents combined with omnipresence (the properties of a deity!) is incredible - portraits are everywhere, quotes are everywhere, the universality of knowledge, the significance of every word, causality itself seems to be conditioned by them. Let us remember the scene in which the surveyor is waiting for Klamm, but he does not come out, somehow supernaturally aware that a lower being is trying to meet him, which should not happen simply as a contradiction to the laws of physics. In a totalitarian society, people live in fear of the consequences that may arise from any unforeseen action. People become unfriendly and suspicious. Foreigners who came to the Soviet Union noticed that the people were extremely unsociable and inhospitable. And now, for comparison, a small piece from “The Castle”. “The second, although no taller and with a much less thick beard, turned out to be a quiet, slow, broad-shouldered man with a high-cheekbone face; he stood with his head down. “Mr. Land Surveyor,” he said, “you can’t stay here.” Sorry for the impoliteness." “I didn’t even think about staying,” said K. “I just wanted to rest a little.” Now I’ve rested and can leave.” “You’re probably surprised by the inhospitality,” he said, “but hospitality is not our custom, we don’t need guests.” ... But not even a second had passed before two people grabbed K. from left and right men and silently, as if there was no other way to explain themselves, they forcefully dragged him to the doors (he was dragged to the doors after he tried to talk to the wife of one of the men - A.Sh.) ... K. asked... from the second one, who, despite his isolation, seemed more courteous to him: “Who are you? Who should I thank for the rest?” “I am the tanner Lazeman,” he answered. “But you don’t need to thank anyone.” Alienation, hostility towards a stranger, fear “as if something might not work out.” This is exactly what was noted by foreigners who tried to communicate with ordinary Soviet citizens on the street. And, finally,. Nobody really knows why they are nocturnal. The explanations that secretary Bürgel gives to K. cannot be taken seriously, like most of the speeches of the inhabitants of the Castle and the Village. Their meaning is so distorted by constant inversion, turning black into white and back again over the course of two or three paragraphs, which causes a most unpleasant, depressing impression. But nevertheless, something that Kafka could not have known immediately comes to mind: NKVD “funnels” came for victims at night. However, he, as a well-read person, could know that it was at night that the Inquisition came, at night the Cathars came, they are also assassins, a Muslim sect that based its influence not only and not so much on ideology, but on the fear of its killers. All punitive authorities prefer to act at night. Why? It’s difficult to say for sure, but we can assume the following: fear, which is the best manager in a totalitarian society, which is especially strong at night (those awaiting arrest exhausted themselves with sleepless nights), the secret with which the invisible but merciless avengers will surround themselves, a certain external sacredness of the action (the similarity with the inevitable and invisible divine hand). I want to draw attention to Kafka’s artistic flair, who caught a phenomenon that was still just emerging in society. In a totalitarian society, as well as in a traditional society, a person’s place is strictly regulated. The simple formula “every cricket knows its nest” rules such a world. External lack of freedom gives rise to internal lack of freedom, humility and subordination. The society of "cogs", the society of absent or crippled individuals - this is the Village. It seems important to note that K. was brought up in another world, and, not belonging to the world of “Castle - Village,” tries to act as a person for whom the insignificance and unimportance of her interests seems a monstrous misunderstanding. The land surveyor's entire stay in the Village is a struggle for himself as an individual. A land surveyor who arrives by invitation realizes on the very first evening that simply to spend the night at an inn is not enough to be human; need to have permission- talk personally with officials, but does not dare. We see that the surveyor can hardly be called a truly brave person; he was unable to overcome the natural barrier that causes the boorish tone of the interlocutor. However, he will further develop in two directions - get used to the boorish tone, stop noticing it, and at the same time lose fear of officials when the question of his vital interests arises. This is a rather interesting and, in my opinion, not a common method of developing an image - at the same time degradation and rebellion that restores the personality. The manifestations of the best and worst qualities of a surveyor are like an endless sine wave. Perhaps this is psychologically justified: when we give in, give in, a back reaction simultaneously begins to develop inside us, which spills out, and after discharge the situation repeats itself again. From the message transmitted by Barnabas, K. learns that if he agrees to serve, he will receive further orders from the headman, who will be his immediate superior. Without hesitating for long, the land surveyor agrees, because where he came from, he had no work, he spent money on the road, and lost assistants with tools along the way; he has no opportunity to return. At the moment of agreement, he vaguely feels that,, entering the service loses freedom , but brushes aside this thought, since he always needs to decide something, he has catastrophically little time to stop and think. Nevertheless, inaccessibility of the Castle for him , the mysterious aura, the timidity that gripped him when communicating only with the son of the junior assistant of the Castle castellan, instills in him a desire to get closer to the Castle. This desire leads him to the inn where the inhabitants of the Castle stay when they come to the village. But then he finds out that, nowhere, except the buffet . This place - a buffet, in a certain sense will become symbolic - painful proximity to the cherished world with the complete impossibility of getting there. It is here, in the buffet, that K. seduces the barmaid Frida, seduces, perhaps, only because he needs somewhere to spend the night, and not because she is Klamm’s mistress, although this is precisely what will be constantly blamed on him, and he himself will begin to agree with this. "...like the girl who was said to be Klamm's mistress - although I think this is greatly exaggerated - how did she allow you to touch her?" - the hostess is perplexed. has no right to appear rebels : decides to seek protection in the Castle, but getting there, into the magical world, will be oh so difficult for him. He decides to talk to Klamm himself, a decision that is beyond the understanding of the inhabitant of the Village. The land surveyor's insolence does not bear fruit. Klamm doesn’t go out, he incomprehensibly, almost mystically, knows that they are waiting for him, and he doesn’t go out. Since the land surveyor refuses to leave, the horses are simply unharnessed and K. has to return to the hotel, after which he commits another unheard-of audacity -. And this despite the fact that immediately before this the author says that the surveyor “had become so easily vulnerable that he was now afraid of almost everything.” The following chain of circumstances forces K., under pressure from Frida, to accept the position of school guard. Job title humiliating , teacher behavior even more humiliating : decides to seek protection in the Castle, but getting there, into the magical world, will be oh so difficult for him. He decides to talk to Klamm himself, a decision that is beyond the understanding of the inhabitant of the Village. The land surveyor's insolence does not bear fruit. Klamm doesn’t go out, he incomprehensibly, almost mystically, knows that they are waiting for him, and he doesn’t go out. Since the land surveyor, but Frida’s dexterity and her own fatigue keep K. within the limits of the circumstances. (By the way, the teacher Giza is described very interestingly. This is a portrait of an ideal Aryan woman from the time of the Hitler Empire, one that will appear much later. What is this, another brilliant insight of the artist?). However, when it turns out that firewood is needed to keep warm in the unheated classroom, K. does not hesitate to break open the shed door. Neither Frida nor her assistants would have dared to do this. When the furious teacher tells K. that he is firing him, he simply quit, which again is nothing more than a rebellion, exit from the general game . And it turns out that enough not to get fired ! problems collapse. Neither his rebellion nor his miserable situation are noticed. You just need to return the item to its place. This, briefly described, is the story of a land surveyor’s struggle to be perceived not as a cog, but as a person. A story whose outcome apparently leads to conformism. The fight against windmills has exhausted K., he wearily agrees that he is “the lowest of the low.” He is even ready to leave, hide in Pepi’s dungeon to wait for spring: a surveyor swallow, under the care of Pepi Thumbelina, who serves the evil moles from the Castle. The ontological development of this existential fundamental phenomenon requires differentiation from the phenomena that most immediately suggest identification with care. Such phenomena are will, desire, attraction and urge. Care cannot be deduced from them, because they themselves are founded in it." In my opinion, the everyday understanding of care is not so far from Heidegger’s descriptive definition, adjusted for the fact that the phenomenal basis for the feeling of integrity, interconnectedness of the structures of being can be not only horror, but also fear and anxiety - everything that, according to Heidegger, confronts us with the fact of “disconnection” (violation of interconnectedness) in our existence. Residents of the village, and even officials in the castle (I remember the ever-collapsing piles of papers). in Sortini’s office and Bürgel’s descriptions of the work of officials) are filled with care. The complete absence of care is an illusion, but still the level of concern determines the level of a person’s satisfaction. Care is the lot of any person at the bottom of the social ladder: he is dependent on others, and therefore his future is not determined. only from this we can conclude that both a totalitarian and a traditional society, living according to the principle “every cricket knows its nest,” are not able to remove care, and, therefore, make a person truly happy, since personal society makes a person dependent on many factors beyond his control, coming from above, and all the so-called “stability” is the stability of the shackles of individuality. Caring is associated with fear, or rather “fear of” according to Heidegger. “Fear always reveals, although with varying clarity, its presence in existence. If we are afraid of home and goodness, then there is no contraindication to the definition given above about what fear. For presence as being-in-the-world is always a preoccupied being-with. For the most part and most immediately the presence There is from that how it was concerned about His danger in the threat to being-with. Fear opens presence in a predominantly privative way. It confuses and makes you “lose your head.” At the same time, fear closes the threatened existence - allowing it to be seen, so that presence, when fear recedes, must still find itself again. Fear, like fear of something, always, whether privatively or positively, opens equally the inner-worldly being in its threat and being-in from the side of its threat. Fear is a mode of disposition." As they say: "which should have been proven." Still, it is difficult to deny Heidegger the ability to dig out the essence of a phenomenon, simultaneously again overwhelming it with bulky, heavy definitions. But the main thing is that Kafka is clearly in tune with Heidegger’s understanding of man in world, in his existence. Already on the very first day in the village, the land surveyor experiences fear of the son of the junior assistant of the castellan, when he speaks to him on the phone. And on the third day, after incessant rudeness and violence, this state becomes familiar: “he has become. so easily vulnerable that now I was afraid of almost everything." The word "fear" is repeated many times in the monologues of Olga and Pepi. It occurs in the novel 38 times, derivatives from this word - 20 times, the verb "to be afraid" - 29, "anxiety " and its derivatives - 21 times, "horror" and its derivatives - 21 times, "fright" and its derivatives - 23 times, "threat" and its derivatives - 19 times. A total of 171 times on 265 standard typographic pages, that is, one word 1.5 pages of text. Quite densely and, of course, works to create a general picture of hopelessness that is so striking in the novel.It is very interesting how the understanding of “guilt” that Amalia’s family feels, and which Olga is trying to explain to the land surveyor, coincides with Heidegger’s understanding of guilt. If you take the trouble to read into Heidegger’s difficult-to-digest search for the essence of guilt, you will be struck by the coincidence with Amalia’s family’s understanding of their guilt.. So, Heidegger gropes in the everyday understanding of guilt for the concept of guilt, that is, debt, and “guilt without reason,” without an obvious reason, which, in my opinion, is also connected with the concept of “debt”, learned in society without comprehension, as if spilled in the air. Such guilt is difficult for a reflective person to realize, which we see in the example of K., who is vainly trying to understand Olga, and in the end is not so much convinced as enchanted by her monotonous speech."... common meanings of being-guilty as “guilty before...” and “guilty in...” can coincide and determine the behavior that we call" . "to be guilty" that is, through the guilt of a crime, to break the law and make oneself subject to punishment. The requirement that a person does not satisfy does not have to relate to property; it can regulate public relations with each other in general. What we actually observe is that Amalia’s incomprehensible guilt is connected with public behavior, notI think it’s even with perfection " Oh, in Heideggerian termsour “call,” which was actually the official’s letter. The resulting “fault” in an offense may again have the character "offences to others."It arisesnot because of the offense as such, but because it is my fault that the other is at risk in his existence , astray or even broken. This offense against others is possible without violating the “public” law. The formal concept of guilt in the sense of guilt before others allows itself to be defined in this way:be-ground flaw in the being-being of another, namely in such a way that this being-ground determines itself from its own why as "defective". This deficiency is a failure to satisfy the requirement that organizes existing events. " . ewith others "... Indeed, Amalia did not violate any formal law. Nevertheless, damage was caused to the existence of the official as a higher being. And thus, in the concept of a village, the hierarchy of relations was violated, that is, everyone’s existence suffered damage. Thus, Amalia’s guilt seems to become a guilt before everyone.being-guilty in the last named sense, as a violation of one or another “moral requirement” there is the way-of-being of presence." . This is also true, of course, about being guilty as “deserving punishment,” as “having a debt,” and about any “guilt in...”."the being which we ourselves are always the essence of and which, among other things, has the existential possibility of questioning, we terminologically grasp aspresence". That is, our very conscious presence in being determines some claims thats that determine guilt in"duty" to reconcile claims (including claims of co-presences) . Agree that there is a certain communality in this, which can be considered as away of reconciling co-presences, their int heresies, due to increased commonalityinterests. This is an ancient peasant form of "presence" appears to be reflected in The Castle. That is , The Village's collective contempt for Amalia's family can largely be explained by the patriarchal understanding of guilt as a universal obligation to the community, which in turn is a means of reducing individual guilt. "... Clarification of the phenomenon of guilt, which is not necessarily tied to “duty” and offense, can only succeed when it is first fundamentally asked aboutguilty-being presence , i.e. the idea of ​​"guilty"understood from the mode of presence to be " . "... You can't go straight from the presencethe size of the “caused” damage, failure to fulfill some requirement, count back to the damage of the “cause”. Being the basis for... does not necessarily have the sameno -character, which is both the privative that is based in it and the privative that arises from it. The foundation does not necessarily first acquire its nullity from that which is founded on it. Here, however, lies then:It is not being-guilty that first results from guilt, but vice versa: the latter becomes possible only “on the basis” of some initial being-guilty . Will it be possible to identify something similar in the being of presence, and how is this even existentially possible?” If you follow the logic of Olga’s story, then the residents of the Village are spontaneous existentialists.For them, guilt is obvious and lies simply in the essence of things, “the original being-guilty.” " ... The structure of the thrown, as well as the sketch, essentially contains insignificance. And it is the basis for the possibility of the insignificance of the improper presence in the fall, as it always actually already happens.Care itself in its being is completely and thoroughly permeated with insignificance. Care - the being of presence - therefore means like a thrown sketch: (insignificant) being-the basis of insignificance. And this says:presence as such is guilty, as long as the formal existential definition of guilt as being the basis of insignificance is right.” And once again I would like to say: “what needed to be proven.” Your presence already initially means the absence of something (“insignificance”) in this world, which means your causality of this, that is, guilt. Actually, conscience is based on something like this, which Heidegger talks about a lot. And the pangs of conscience are known to be strong. Therefore, in all that behavior of Amalia’s family, unimaginable for a non-existential consciousness, there is not only fear, but also pangs of conscience. "...The call is the call of care. Being-guilty constitutes that being which we call care. ... The invoking response makes presence understand that it is the insignificant foundation of its insignificant outline, standing in the possibility of its being - must, i.e. guiltyfrom lost to people pull yourself back to yourself.What Dasein makes itself understand in this way will then still be a kind of knowledge about itself. And the hearing answering such a call will be fact "guilty". There are much more striking examples that are difficult to cite due to their large volume. But in this passage, characteristic Kafka techniques are visible: mutual contradictions and movements of speech in a circle, and each movement not only refutes previous knowledge about the subject of speech, but also adds some new vision. To get to the meaning in this case is possible only by removing contradictions, sometimes this is only possible by reduction - that is, cutting off intentions, psychology, etc. The above passage in particular is reduced to the loss, abandonment that K. feels in this world, because one can come to such dull places and want to stay only because a person does not see the horizons of the future; the present, worries, absorb him completely. taking note I consider her heroic . ... And if I compare these two cases, then at allas "defective". I'm not saying that they are similar, they are like black and white , Andwhite here - Fried A . At worst you can laugh at Frida - I myself then, in the beer hall, laughed so ill-manneredly and then regretted it, however, here, if someone laughs, it means they are gloating or jealous, but still you can laugh at them. But Amalia - unless you are blood related to her - one can only despise . That’s why both cases, although different, as you say,". It’s amazing how much sophistry! This means that the characters in the novel cannot justify the truth and justice of actions and events using a method that excludes sophistry. The rhythm of speech, if pronounced out loud, is similar to self-hypnosis or auto-training: monotonous, repetitive muttering with attitudes towards positive (even if the statements change to the opposite after a few sentences). And yet, the notorious “openness” of presence must be eliminated, otherwise care and fear will torment a person, so you need to prove to yourself that everything is fine, at least by methods of self-suggestion. characters of the Castle. Those who remember the Soviet era remember well the role that long speeches played in society. The leaders of the country began, leaders of all stripes took up, and everything ended on a personal level - in the country of the Soviets they loved to talk as much as they drank. and maybe more, because when they drank they talked a lot. Apparently this is inevitable in societies where everything is based on constant proof that black is white. There is a feeling of a huge, all-pervasive untruth, deception, and clouded meaning that serve as the core of the world of the novel and do not allow it to fall apart.Due to constant self-entanglement, the meaning of life, the meaning of words, the meaning of the actions of the inhabitants of the village is elusive, calming, depersonalized by public opinion. And here we can recall Heidegger’s “alienation,” when life becomes, as it were, not a completely personal life, it is driven by the environment. "Self-confidence and determination of peoplespread a growing lack of need in their own located understanding. The illusion of people that they maintain and lead a full and authentic “life” brings into the presence calmness,for whom everything is “in the best order” and for whom all doors are open. Falling being-in-the-world, tempting itself, at the same time self-soothing. This tranquility in non-own being, however, does not lead to stagnation and inactivity, but drives us into the uncontrollability of “occupations.” Being-fallen into the “world” now does not come to some kind of peace. Seductive reassuranceaccelerates from the presence of his property and the possibility, even that of genuine failure, does not entrust him, however, to a being that it itself is not, but pushes him into his non-property, into a possible way of beinghimself. The seductive and reassuring alienation of the fall leads in its special dynamics to the fact that presence in oneselfgets confused. The identified phenomena of temptation, tranquility, alienation and self-entanglement (confusion) characterize a specific existential way of falling. We call this “dynamics” of presence in its beingbreakdown. Presence breaks out of himself into himself, into the groundlessness and insignificance of everyday life that is not his own.". The land surveyor immediately finds himself in the trouble of alienation. The more he tries to understand another culture, the more he loses himself, the more alienated his life becomes. Thus, Kafka states that both totalitarian and traditional societies have an alienating effect on a person, depriving his life of true creative fullness, plunging him either into the abyss of care, ordeceptive surfacetranquility, and often both, because confusion as a consequence of anxiety gives rise to a certain insensitivity in the inability to cope with alienation , will replace the spruce of tranquility. The system cripples people, cripples them morally, namely, they do not want to be individuals, they do not want to decide their own fate. Being bound by constant fear, they are their own punishment. There is no need to punish them. The feeling of guilt arises in them by itself, it lives in them along with the feeling of fear. That is why Amalia’s family essentially turns their life into hell. If they had not lost their presence of mind, if they had not allowed them to become convinced of their imaginary guilt, their parents’ illness, Olga’s voluntary distortion of her life and the life of Barnabas, poverty and despondency would not have happened. General contempt, of course, would hardly have escaped them, but it could have taken a less radical form. Are the characters in The Castle happy? It seemed to me that they believe that they are happy until events occur, after which they see the light for a moment, and confessions of unhappiness involuntarily fall from their lips. This is how Pepi habitually says how good, warm and calm it is down there, but suddenly breaks into frank confessions about the unbearability of such a life. And even Frida, ideally suited for life in such conditions, leaves the hotel with the first person she comes across, the one who, as it seems to her, belongs to another world and can change her life. Later, shortly before the betrayal, she tells the land surveyor: “I can’t stand such a life. If you want to stay with me, we need to emigrate somewhere, to Southern France, to Spain.” But isn’t such universal happiness a deception? Isn’t it akin to the imaginary happiness of the characters in the Castle, happiness based on deception and self-deception, on fear and denunciation, on the inability to change one’s life? Remember, nowhere is there such a feeling of universal happiness as in the art of the Stalinist USSR and Hitler's Germany. Sunlit spaces, beautiful healthy people, rare life-depressing events are produced by rare dissenters, enemies. As we know, many who lived in those days were confident in their happiness. Despite the fact that they were afraid that they had no right to say what they thought, despite the fact that they denounced everyone they considered unreliable, that they were malnourished, dressed haphazardly, worked with the same enthusiasm and for the same enthusiasm. G. Philosophy: Textbook. - M. Gardariki, 2001. - 816 p., p. 187 Martin Heidegger “Being and Time”/ http://lib.ru/HEIDEGGER/bytie.txt#_Toc459301230 Franz Kafka “Castle: Novel; Novels and Parables; Letters to Milena: Translated from German/Author. Foreword by D. Zatonsky. - M.: Politizdat, 1991. - 576 p. Franz Kafka “Castle: Novel; Novels and parables; Letters to Milena: Trans. from German/Auth. Preface D. Zatonsky. - M.: Politizdat, 1991. - 576 p.

I became acquainted with Kafka in my first year; a friend advised me to read “The Trial.” I read it. I must say, this was the most unusual work I had read at that time. I liked it, I found my meaning in this work.

I must say that I studied at the Faculty of Philology and Journalism, so I had to encounter Kafka again, but already in my 4th year. It was necessary to read "The Metamorphosis" and "The Castle" or "The Trial". Then I chose “The Process” again, I wanted to discover something new for myself, perhaps rethink it. I got to “The Castle” in my 5th year, remembering the different interpretations of the plot I heard from a teacher on foreign literature, or rather what was written, it’s difficult to talk about the “plot”; in my opinion, it’s not here. I have an idea.

Anyway. Let's talk about the "plot" first.

A hero named K. comes to the Village to work as a land surveyor at the invitation of the Castle, which governs this Village. The hero wants to talk directly with the authorities who hired him, but he is prohibited from entering the Castle, because... he doesn't have a special invitation. As a result.K. Lost and completely confused, he wanders throughout the village for 6 days, trying to get to the Castle and looking for people to help him. However, everything and everyone is against him. Everything that seemed logical to him becomes illogical. The hero is lost.

The novel is not over. The manuscript ends abruptly and it is impossible to understand what happened next to the hero.

Now about the interpretation. The novel is entirely metaphorical, it contains increased allegory, many symbols and parables.

Thoughts from Max Brod, Kafka's friend and interpreter:

“The castle was perceived as the habitat of God, and K.’s behavior in line with this vision of the novel was interpreted as “the failure of human desire for the final, absolute purity” of the truth of faith.”

The second interpretation is power:

“...the perception of the novel “The Castle” as Kafka’s prediction of power practices and hierarchical relations of a totalitarian state of a fascist or communist type was one of the extremely common reader approaches to the work.”

The third interpretation is from the point of view of the writer’s biography.

The novel emphasizes his “deep confessionalism”; a special role is given here to the history of Kafka’s relationship with the Czech journalist Milena Jesenskaya. In the “brave and generous” Frida they see the traits of Milena, and in the official Klamm they see the traits of her husband, journalist Oscar Pollack. The castle is a castle in the town of Vossek in Bohemia, associated with the novelist's childhood memories and experiences.

This is not the last interpretation; more can be found. I wrote the main ones.

My interpretation and understanding

For me, from the first lines, the idea of ​​the novel was about man’s thorny path to God, to true faith. After all, only on this path can a person rush around, realize himself, break himself and build his thoughts again. Only this path is intangible, it can only be felt. As a result, at the end of the path, if we succeed, we receive enlightenment, the blessing of God. In another case, we rush around for a long time, fall and do not come to the true faith, like the hero K. For me, this is 6 days long in the long life of a person, with all his sins and consequences.

I can't say that I really love Kafka's literature, but he made me think differently. He interested me. While reading, I was irritated, confused, deceived, perplexed, and felt some kind of guilt. I not only thought, but also felt something, and this means that the author achieved his goal. After all, when reading each work, the first question that should arise is “What does the reader feel?”

Perhaps in 5 years, when I start re-reading this book again, I will find new meaning, and in 10 years I will return to my original idea. Or maybe this path will be the same.

I wish the reader not to read the plot, but to look for the answer to his question in parables, allegories, and metaphors. And you will definitely have a question.