2 Answers

  1. It doesn't make sense. Not in the novel — it just doesn't exist in the world. More precisely, there is no human meaning in the world, and human meanings are decided and regulated by people who do not have human features.

    To. he has all the characteristics of a person around whom the story usually revolves, but when he gets into the world of the Castle, all his human qualities are reset. What they are, what they are not. They are not meaningless to him, but they are meaningless in the world; for the world is not about him, and the narrative is not about him. The story of the Castle — but we have absolutely nothing to say about the Castle.

    The Castle is supposedly the main organizing center, but in the organization of the Castle, everything is disconnected: objects are separated from their pointers; facts are separated from the events they describe. It seems to have a hierarchy, but the lowest of the Castle officials can have unlimited power. The efficiency of these officials seems to be impeccable, but they make countless mistakes. Each of the errors is insignificant, but the importance and reliability of any of the papers coming out of the Castle cannot be underestimated, even if one paper may contradict all the others.

    You can't even find the castle — there are no roads leading to it, and when we get closer, we still, like in Leibniz's mill, see only parts, details, and we can't see anything in common.

    It's just that the Castle is not a place. This is the world order. And the world order is absolutely not human.

    The closer a person is to the Castle — the less they look like a person. The most obvious example is Klamm, who is practically speechless and sleeps sitting up, but even K.'s assistants not only don't speak like people, but also move around contrary to all logic, simply appearing at different points in space. The most human characters in the novel are the members of Barnabas's family, who are supposedly rejected by the Castle (but in fact simply stopped taking part in it), and these are the only people with whom K. has a relationship. as a result, he is able to talk.

    At the same time, human relations seem to remain. People do interact with each other, but in light of the way the rest of the world works, these relationships don't mean anything. They also lose their meaning.

    One might wonder where the cause is and where the effect is — perhaps it is the people, bureaucracy, and institutions that make the situation so intractable, and if they could be corrected, then everything else would be corrected. This is a tempting and common interpretation, but it is completely meaningless. In Kafka's world, there are no causal relationships. It doesn't make any sense that the Castle recognizes K. as a surveyor — this is a separate fact, which means absolutely nothing in the big picture of what is happening — and not a single fact means anything.

    Besides, it's not all out of spite — it would be better if it was out of spite — but the world is just like that. It doesn't even move, it stands — hidden under the snow, silent, indifferent to the fate of the creatures that inhabit it, because it probably doesn't even know they exist. Not surprisingly, K. all the time it seems that he needs to somehow guess what the Lock wants — it is impossible to interact with the Lock, it is impossible to talk, because it is impossible to establish a connection with something that has nothing human in it. The lock is different. It's not us. It doesn't intersect with us in any way, and it never will.

    So it is not surprising that the novel remained unfinished — such a narrative can not give permission, it can only stop in mid-sentence.

  2. This question has been hanging unanswered for a week now. I would not undertake to answer it, because about the meaning of the work of art answers (or does not answer) it is itself, completely, with all its form.

    Otherwise, what would be the point of writing it? And how can I answer you without rewriting this novel here?

    But I suddenly thought: perhaps your question is one of the questions that poor surveyor K. has not been able to find an answer to. What if you are the same surveyor K.? So I decided to answer.

    • Take heart. There will be no final.

    Perhaps you mean, so to speak, the “open” ending of the novel (“At this point the manuscript ends.”)? No plot ending (no one died, got married, or resurrected)? I.e.-why isn't it finished?

    • If that's what you're asking, it doesn't really matter to the reader.

    Plot incompleteness-sometimes-is even played out as a trick, but, as it seems to me , this is not the case of Kafka. The lack of denouement is inside his poetics, not a refinement. Although he himself (as a private person, as a physical author), quite possibly, was looking for it.

    This kind of incompleteness, by the way, does not belong to the “anti-metaphysical” 20th century. Dostoevsky's “The Brothers Karamazov” (and “Crime and Punishment”, etc.). Pushkin has many texts that seem to be ragged, for example. If my memory serves me correctly, Akhmatova writes somewhere that they are not ragged, but simply “there is nothing more to add”. I'll agree with her on that. She gave K. her trembling hand and made him sit down next to her; she spoke with difficulty, and it was difficult to understand her, but what she said…

Leave a Reply

Categories