Kafka’s ‘The Castle’ is another example of why the term Kafkaesque was derived from his nightmarish works. The story follows a man known only as K. (the same name as the protagonist of ‘The Trial’ though a different figure, and interestingly the stories very much mimic one another) who has been recruited as a surveyor by the castle, though he finds he was mistakenly appointed and has no work. Alike to ‘The Trial’ K. finds himself in an endless and futile struggle to appeal to “the castle” and have his case looked over, where he finds no belonging in both the village and among the officials of the castle. 

Kafka once again criticises bureaucracy and failed legal systems in this work, and though surreal and purposefully confusing and fractured, it is also a lot less engaging than ‘The Trial’ as it primarily does this through mostly meaningless conversations with various village folk. 

It is impossible not to address the fact that Kafka died before he could finish this work, it ends mid-sentence unexplained and leaving more questions even than the multitude of questions Kafka intends to leave relating to his surrealist works. I knew from the first few chapters that K. would never reach the castle as otherwise it would defeat the purpose of the meaning I assume this text is supposed to convey, however I suppose the book being unfinished we can never know if it was intended he would get there in the end. Also the speed that K. became infatuated by the books love interest Freida, and how little this sudden romance and the turbulence that follows occurs is completely overlooked within the books plot, almost to the extent of sudden infatuation made infamous in ‘Romeo and Juliet’. 

Whilst a fascinating concept on surface and extremely absurdist and surreal in Kafka’s typical fashion, I felt ‘The Castle’ was attempting to mimic ‘The Trial’ and doing a much worse job of it. Perhaps if Kafka was able to finish ‘The Castle’ it would’ve tidied itself up or left me more broken in disbelief, (each of these would’ve been beneficial to the story), but with the fractured story we unfortunately have I have to declare that ‘The Trial’ executes the same concept to a much better standard.