Information AboutThe Castle |
The article is about the German novel by Franz Kafka. For other uses, see The Castle (disambiguation) . ''The Castle'' is a philosophical novel by Franz Kafka . In it a protagonist, known only as K., strives to gain access to the mysterious authorities of a castle that governs the village where K. has arrived to work as a Land Surveyor . Dark and at times surreal, ''The Castle'' is about Alienation , Bureaucracy , and the seemingly endless frustrations of man's attempts to stand against the system. HISTORY OF THE NOVEL Kafka began writing ''The Castle'' on the evening of January 22, 1922, the day he arrived at the mountain resort of Spindlemühle (now in the Czech Republic). A picture taken of him upon his arrival shows him by a horse-drawn sleigh in the snow in a setting reminiscent of ''The Castle''."Franz Kafka & the trip to Spindemuhle", Eric Ormsby, ''The New Criterion'', Nov 1998, (http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/17/nov98/ormsby.htm) Hence, the significance that the first few chapters of the handwritten manuscript were written in first person and at some point later changed by Kafka to a third person narrator, 'K.'''The Castle'', Alfred A. Knopf, 1968, New York, New York, Publisher's note page ''vi'' Max Brod Kafka died prior to finishing ''The Castle'' and it is questionable whether Kafka intended on finishing it if had he survived his tuberculosis. On separate occasions he told his friend Max Brod of two different conditions: K., the book's protagonist, would continue to reside and die in the village; the castle notifying him on his death bed that his "legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there" ALLUSIONS TO ''THE CASTLE'' IN OTHER WORKS A story similar to that of ''The Castle'' is told in the television series '' The Prisoner ''. In the late 1970s, an unlicensed Computer Game Spin-off of ''The Prisoner'' took things one step further by incorporating elements of ''The Castle'' into the game play. RELEASE DETAILS Refer to:
The Castle is also referred to in Lawrence Thornton's Imagining Argentina. A professor is arrested under suspicion of subversive activities. He tells the authorities he has been meeting Dostoevski, Koestler and Camus at a place called The Castle. The main character's cat is also named Kafka. EXTERNAL LINKS
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