“It was late evening when K. arrived.” This opening line embodies the shroud of darkness that obfuscates any form of human rationality throughout The Castle. True rationality is destroyed and buried under a sea of files upon files--more false rationality, symbolized by the files, results in less true rationality, in the form of human understanding. And, just as in The Trial when Josef K ends his life shot like a dog, K. in The Castle, too, is turned to a mere animal, sleeping on a taproom floor, used by the state as nothing but a mule. It is the ultimate dehumanization of man via the power above, the bureaucracy that crushes the final vestiges of freedom and individuality writhing within its underlings. As Kafka writes, “Outwardly the inn was very similar to the inn where K. was staying, there were hardly any great outward differences in the village, but one could detect certain minor differences right away” (Kafka 32). One can understand this sentence through the mimetic philosophy of Rene Girard: as the supremely intense Girardian mimesis overtakes the residents of the village, the battles become so strong because the stakes are so low. It would be too difficult to break from the files, to break from the prescribed mundanity for something different, something exceptional; that would be too dangerous. So instead we struggle for that which does not matter at all.

The Castle is ephemeral and almost non-existent. Not once in the novel does K. ever touch a Castle-dweller. However, the physical nature of the Castle is so miniscule to mean almost nothing in the narrative. The true Castle is within. When K. first enters the village and is questioning the distinction between the town peasants and the Castle, the teacher utters, “‘There is no difference between the peasants and the Castle’” (Kafka 9). The peasants are the Castle, and the Castle is the peasants. Humanity forms its own reality, and Kafka paints a reality of self-locked chains. The landlady at the inn exclaims to K., “You’re not from the Castle; you’re not from the village; you are nothing” (Kafka 48). K. finds that he must play into the mimetic games of the village people or else be viewed as the outcast: the Girardian pariah that shall become a sacrificed scapegoat. Via his sacrifice, the citizens can achieve some sense of pyschosocial unity. Is sacrifice worse for K. than just muddling through and attempting to climb the false ranks of power himself?

As K. seeks to grab the chains, as he futilely grasps at the rungs of the Castle ladder, they only fall further away, elucidating the reality that the only way to destroy this false power is to turn away from it completely, to leave the phony ladder behind. Kafka depicts this fog of the Castle as he writes, "When K. looked at the Castle, it was as if at times he were watching someone who sat there calmly...the longer he looked the less he could make out, and the deeper everything sank into twilight" (Kafka 98-99). But, given this constant lack of clarity, why does K. not just abandon this sordid village as soon as he hears what a farce it all is? He is already ensnared in the power of the climb, the climb to Klamm, the false climb to a false sense of self. As Kafka writes, “The Castle up there, oddly dark already, which K. had still been hoping to reach today, receded again” (Kafka 15). The darkness, the confusion, the files: all work to suppress K.’s understanding of his own ability to see the pure absurdity in it all and just turn away. Instead he falls deeper, turns his locks tighter, and becomes the Castle.

-Charlie, July 2024