Pattern of Ideas in Kafka's The Castle

To refer to a pattern of ideas in The Castle is to make an assertion about a project of literary irony that nevertheless--or for that very reason--entails a project of literary morality as well. The Castle does far more than suggest that things may not be what they seem and that the difference between appearance and reality has a certain moral content. The very environment of the story defies expectations about immediate experience of the universe.

Lundwall cites the "bizarre universes" that Kafka creates (229). K's bizarre universe unfolds because K cannot report for work to the castle that has hired him as a land surveyor and because of the persistently mixed messages he receives on that account. The action of the book is defined by K's attempt to make connection with the castle, but every method and stratagem he employs to do so fail. Basically, K assumes the status of illegal alien in the village near the castle and is repeatedly reminded that this status puts him in violation of the law. K is

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of power and authority that (as K thinks, anyway) lends or will lend meaning to K's existence. Compare Kafka's narrative strategy of indeterminacy can be seen in the methodological difference between the modernist Kafka and (say) the Romantic Poe, who like Kafka creates environments of frustration and irredeemable horror but unlike Kafka always reaches resolution. Consider "The Pit and the Pendulum," wherein the torture cell, the rats, the ever-shortening distance between blade and body, the knowledge of certain death are convincingly and horrifically related: and at the Last Minute, the Regiment Saves the Day. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," the murderer-narrator is not saved, but his fate is resolved, consistent with poetic justice. Only in a burlesque such as "A Predicament," wherein the narrator explains that she upset her servants one day when her head accidentally got separated from her body and bounced down the pathway, does Poe throw out verisimilitude altogether. K's story begins as something of an elaboration of single-mindedness in the midst of unavoidable distractions and a fearful meditation on the growing awareness that sensible plans and actions will never be completed. It does not occur to K that it may be a more prudent
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Approximate Word count = 3678
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)