The Castle
Ratings90
Average rating3.7
Can a reader say I liked The Castle? Loved it? If one does, what does that say about the reader?
I think all would agree that The Castle has one of the oddest plots ever written. A man comes to a castle, wants to work there, and has to find ways to get the attention of the people in the castle. He never does much of anything in the story except try to gain entry to the castle and he never successfully does that.
It's the feeling of the book that is so close to the bone; it's a story of the feelings of modern life. Kafka captures the anxiety and the dread and the confusion and the anomie of day-to-day life in the world, and he does it in a way that makes the reader feel all the anxiety and the dread and the confusion and the anomie.
It's brilliant and terrifying. I'm glad I read it. I'm glad I'm done with it.
If you're searching for a work that embodies the "Kafkaesque" mood, this is one of Kafka's works that best captures it. In my opinion, this mood is even more pronounced in this book than in the popular short story "Metamorphosis." However, if you're not interested in exploring this mood, you might find the book less appealing. It can be confusing and repetitive, often leaving you with the feeling that you don't know what's happening.
One aspect that could be improved is the fact that the book was not finished. While this isn't a major issue, it did stand out to me more here than in some of Kafka's other works. I was left wanting more, which can be both a positive and a negative. It's something to keep in mind.
Overall, it's brilliant. I'm glad I read it, and I'm glad I'm done with it.
I've just read this alongside “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power” and a re-read of Orwell's “Nineteen Eighty Four”.
What's to be said? Prescient? Of course not. Situations are observed and then the theme is seemly drawn further, for (satirical) effect.
We start with the precepts that there are rules and consistency and that systems can be navigated, once navigated documented, then decisions and positions maintained.
Dealing with authority and bureaucracy is fundamentally unbalanced for the individual anyway, when authority then discards or works to undermine these precepts...
Take these factors and inject surveillance, mistrust, informational revisionism and gaslighting.
Where does it lead? Not to comedy. Unsettling and sobering.
Eric Ambler takes similar themes of statelessness, individual vulnerability, but at least Arthur Abdel Simpson, gets some salvation.
Never have I read something so depressing and frightening. I must say that there were several times when I wanted to quit reading this book, but I couldn't get myself to put it down. The bizarre world that Kafka created for K. sucked me in. I found myself feeling so sorry for him that I had to continue, if only to discover the outcome of his fate.