The Castle (Classics of World Literature)

by Franz Kafka

Only as a village employee, removed as far as possible from the gentlemen in the Castle, was he in a position to achieve anything in the Castle.

The people in the village who had got rid of him or appeared to be afraid of him seemed to him less dangerous; they made him more self-reliant, they helped him to summon all his resources. But those who purported to help him, who by means of a silly charade introduced him to their family instead of into the Castle – they distracted him whether they wished to or not, and contrived to weaken him.

‘I only find it entertaining,’ said K., ‘because it gives me an insight into the absurd confusion that can sometimes determine a person’s existence.’

‘You are right that statements from the Castle cannot be taken literally. But caution is always necessary, not just in this case, and the more important the statement in question, the more caution is needed.

‘Give me your hand. There. Now promise to be perfectly honest with me, and I will be perfectly honest with you.’ ‘Very good,’ said K., ‘but who is going to begin?’ ‘I will,’ said the landlady; she did not give the impression that she meant to confide in K., but rather that she was eager to speak first.

If, as you complain, he sometimes stands there in the bar looking lost, this is because he really does feel lost – without feeling unhappy about it, certainly, I know him well enough by now

He took one out, unscrewed the top and sniffed it. He smiled involuntarily; it smelt so sweet, so appealing, as when one hears kind words, words of praise from someone very dear and has no idea what they are for and has no wish to know, when one is simply happy in knowing who is speaking them.

seemed to K. as if all contact with him had been broken off, as if he were now indeed freer than ever, as if he could wait here in this otherwise forbidden place as long as he wished; as if he had fought for this freedom as few others could have done, as if no one could touch him or drive him away, or even speak to him, and yet at the same time – and this conviction was at least as strong – as if there were nothing more senseless, more desolate than this freedom, this waiting, this invulnerability.

And of course I can’t interrupt the work I’m not doing, either; I can’t even incur his displeasure – how am I to earn his approval?

‘It’s so difficult to know what to think, K.,’ said Frieda,

Quite honestly, what disappoints me is not what you have achieved at the Castle, but what I’ve achieved with you. You are allowed into the Castle, you visit the offices the whole time, you spend whole days in the same room as Klamm, you’re an officially recognised messenger, you have a right to official clothes, you’re given important correspondence to deliver, you’re all these things and you’re allowed to do all these things, and you come back down here and when we should be hugging each other and weeping with joy, you seem to lose all your courage at the sight of me, you have doubts about everything, all you want to do is mend shoes and you leave the letter, which is the guarantee of our future, lying around somewhere.”

I have contact with the Castle not jut through the servants themselves, but also perhaps in the sense, I hope, that anyone up there who is watching me and what I’m doing – and managing the huge staff of servants is of course an extremely important and exacting part of the authorities’ work – that anyone who is watching me might judge me more leniently than others, he might recognise that I am, however pitifully, fighting for our family and continuing our father’s efforts. If that person looks at it that way, perhaps I’ll also be forgiven for accepting money from the servants and using it for the family.

this can't not be a metaphor for god

This change, if it is a change and not an illusion – illusions are more frequent than changes

It’s also impossible to steer a course between these two extremes, in other words to judge the letters correctly, because their value is constantly shifting, the responses they provoke are endless, so which one you choose, and therefore your reaction, is a matter of pure chance.

The only conclusion was that theirs was a quite different kind of tiredness from K.’s. Theirs was no doubt a tiredness resulting from work done gladly, something that from the outside looked like tiredness, but was in fact an indestructible peace and calm. When one feels a little fatigued in the middle of the day, that is part of the normal happy course of the day. For these gentlemen, thought K., it’s always the middle of the day.