Skip to main content

The Burden of Individuality


Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka’s [1883-1924] novel, The Castle, tells the story of a man called K who is on a futile quest.  K arrives as a land surveyor in the village which is under the jurisdiction of the Castle.  But his summoning is caused by a bureaucratic mistake committed in the Castle; a land surveyor is not required in the village now.  K meets Frieda in the inn meant exclusively for the Castle’s bureaucrats though others are allowed to buy food from there.  Frieda becomes K’s fiancée, leaving her job as a barmaid in the inn as well as her enviable position as the mistress of Klamm, the Chief of the Castle. 

Nobody in the village can enter the Castle though everybody’s life is controlled by the Castle.  K wants to meet Klamm but never succeeds.  Finally Frieda leaves him and goes back to her former job in the inn and also accepts one of the two assistants of K as her new man.

The Castle towers above the village as a symbol of both spiritual and temporal powers.  It controls everybody’s life in the village.  People have mixed feelings about it: awe, terror, respect and suspicion.  The women are proud to be mistresses of the bureaucrats in the Castle.  Men of the village consider themselves lucky if they can marry one of those women whose youth was spent in the company of the castellans.

There is one woman, only one, in the village who refused to be a mistress.  Amalia tore up the message from the bureaucrat and threw its pieces on the face of the messenger.  Since insult of a bureaucrat is an unspeakable sacrilege, her offence is mentioned as insult of a messenger from the Castle.  Her family is ostracised. Amalia is viewed as a “black girl’.

The Castle is a symbol of all human yearnings: spiritual as well as temporal.  The Castle adds meaning to the life of the villagers though none of them know what is going on in the Castle.  The Chief of the Castle is Klamm (though the Castle belongs to Count Westwest) whose name means ‘illusion’.  Klamm never shows any interest in the life of any villager though every villager is interested in Klamm.

Klamm gives meaning to their life.  Klamm adds colour and zest to life.  When one of the bureaucrats orders something to K “in the name of Klamm” K asks, “In the name of Klamm!  Does he trouble himself about my affairs, then?”  And the bureaucrat’s answer gives us an insight into the nature of Klamm: “As to that,” said the bureaucrat, “I have no information and you certainly have still less; we can safely leave that to him.  All the same I command you by virtue of the function granted by Klamm...”

Klamm, a metaphor, a symbol or a mere illusion, determines the functions of everyone in the village.  Amalia is the only individual who defied that function “engineered by the Castle.”  She asserted her individuality which she did not allow to be controlled by any external force, Klamm or Castle.

In Kafka’s world, there is little difference between the spiritual and the temporal, the real and the illusory.  That is how the real human world is.  We use the spiritual forces in order to attain certain goals and objectives in the material world, and we manipulate the material world hoping to appease the gods in heaven.  We establish relationships with people assuming it to be love or friendship when in reality it is as good as Frieda trying to “make a stir” or “cause a scandal” by leaving Klamm and taking K so that people will keep talking for a long time.


The Castle is a metaphysical novel, not at all easy to interpret.  I’m not interpreting it here.  I reread the novel in the last few days because I began to feel that  my existence was becoming something similar to K’s: being in a place where one is not wanted.  When I read it now, after a gap of three decades, it became much more meaningful to me.  The Castle is not far away.  Klamm is not a mere illusion.  To hold on to your individuality like Amalia is a struggle worth putting up. 
Labels:

Comments

  1. IndraniAugust 13, 2014 at 10:14 AM

    I have a translated work of him lying in my shelf for a long time. Feeling inspired to read it after reading this review.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 13, 2014 at 12:11 PM

      Go ahead, Indrani. I admire his 'Trial' and this novel mentioned in the blog. 'America' is also a good work.

      Delete
  2. Datta GhoshAugust 13, 2014 at 10:22 AM

    I love Kafka, though I can access only his translated version, I am reading The Trial now. His works are never easy to understand, its layered but that's what makes it more intriguing

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 13, 2014 at 12:12 PM

      The Trial is better than The Castle, according to my judgment. Yeah, layers of meaning, that's just what you get in Kafka.

      Delete
  3. A Homemaker's UtopiaAugust 13, 2014 at 1:19 PM

    Metamorphosis is the only work I read from Kafka..Nice post :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 13, 2014 at 4:29 PM

      I haven't read Metamorphosis though I'm aware that it is as good as the others. Must read that too. There's something uniquely charming about the Kafkaesque world.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

In this Wonderland

I didn’t write anything in the last few days. Nor did I feel any urge to write. I don’t know if this lack of interest to write is what’s called writer’s block. Or is it simple disenchantment with whatever is happening around me? We’re living in a time that offers much, too much, to writers. The whole world looks like a complex plot for a gigantic epic. The line between truth and fiction has disappeared. Mass murders have become no-news. Animals get more compassion than fellow human beings. Even their excreta are venerated! Folk tales are presented as scientific truths while scientific truths are sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. When the young generation in Nepal set fire to their Parliament and Supreme Court buildings, they were making an unmistakable statement: that they are sick of their political leaders and their systems. Is there any country whose leaders don’t sicken their citizens? I’m just wondering. Maybe, there are good leaders still left in a few coun...
12 comments
Read more

Whose Rama?

Book Review Title: Whose Rama? [Malayalam] Author: T S Syamkumar Publisher: D C Books, Kerala Pages: 352 Rama may be an incarnation of God Vishnu, but is he as noble a man [ Maryada Purushottam ] as he is projected to be by certain sections of Hindus? This is the theme of Dr Syamkumar’s book, written in Malayalam. There is no English translation available yet. Rama is a creation of the Brahmins, asserts the author of this book. The Ramayana upholds the unjust caste system created by Brahmins for their own wellbeing. Everyone else exists for the sake of the Brahmin wellbeing. If the Kshatriyas are given the role of rulers, it is only because the Brahmins need such men to fight and die for them. Valmiki’s Rama too upheld that unjust system merely because that was his Kshatriya-dharma, allotted by the Brahmins. One of the many evils that Valmiki’s Rama perpetrates heartlessly is the killing of Shambuka, a boy who belonged to a low caste but chose to become an ascetic. The...
8 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more