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r0sem4rie's review against another edition
4.0
This is simultaneously one of the most boring and insufferable books I've ever read, but also one of the most impressive and perfectly crafted books I've ever read. I hated this book so much, but that's also why I loved it.
Regardless of how much I hated reading this book (in the end), it is still one of my forever favourites. And the dread of reading it and how annoying it was to get through towards the end also felt perfect. It felt like that was exactly how the book intended to make you feel.
The atmosphere is incredible — so dreamlike and intriguing. The Castle is also a surprisingly funny book because of how absurd everything is. Nothing makes sense but at the same time it all makes perfect sense.
The Castle also contains my absolute favourite quote of all time:
“I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”
Regardless of how much I hated reading this book (in the end), it is still one of my forever favourites. And the dread of reading it and how annoying it was to get through towards the end also felt perfect. It felt like that was exactly how the book intended to make you feel.
The atmosphere is incredible — so dreamlike and intriguing. The Castle is also a surprisingly funny book because of how absurd everything is. Nothing makes sense but at the same time it all makes perfect sense.
The Castle also contains my absolute favourite quote of all time:
“I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”
adholmes3's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
kackjennedy's review against another edition
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
sidharthvardhan's review against another edition
5.0
“Stop interpreting everything!” said K
On the face of it, ‘The Castle’ may read to a most of us as if it was Kafka’s last joke – after going through long monologues covering pages – analysing, re-analysing and over-analysing each minute event; you suddenly find it ending mid-sentence.
It has some resemblance to ‘The Trial’ which was a work on judiciary – the way it looked like a work on government and bureaucracy. Though unlike shorter and constantly amazing ‘The Trial’, this one is unnecessarily detailed and one can’t make sense of anything from unfinished work. Though ‘The Trial’ was unfinished too – but it was faster to make its points and despite being unfinished was still awesome. This one requires a greater deal of thought before you start making sense of things.
All characters are ignorant of motives that are deriving the scenes and are constantly analysing them to make sense of things. It is annoying and I'm entirely with K when he asks Olga to stop interpreting everything.I'm not judging the great novelist; it was a mere work-in-progress – not yet made presentable. At one point K is talking about his family, at another he is ready to marry a woman he just found.
Kafka probably had planned some great writing in the unwritten part of the book which would have brought out the themes he wanted to explore more clearly. Village people are constantly interpreting Authorities' actions because later won't offer any explanations. Similarly we too are caught into interpreting an unfinished story. When he gave up the project, he didn't imagine that his books would be published after his death. He actually wanted to get his three unfinished novels (The catle, The Trial and Amereca) burned - as he desired from his friend Max Brod. Thank god, later had sense enough not to do so.
What were motifs?
Some say it is theology - with biblical names, first chapter being named 'Arrival' and Castle being seen as something of salvation. There is a outcast family which may denote anti-Semitism. Though he is absent in almost all the book,Klamm's name kept occurring up as if he was a god - absent, unavailable, may be non existant, yet constantly talked about. The villagers are constantly trying to just worst of bureaucrats actions while keeping them in positive light, the later won't explain anything - making bureaucracy comparable to god.
Another theme seems to be Schizophrenia. The name 'Klamm' in czech means illusion. With time Klamm is growing more and more distant from real existence and everything about him grows suspicious with time:
He speaks to Klamm, but is it Klamm? Isn’t it rather someone who merely resembles Klamm? Perhaps at the very most a secretary who is a little like Klamm and goes to great lengths to be even more like him and tries to seem important by affecting Klamm’s drowsy, dreamlike manner. That part of his being is easiest to imitate, many try to do so; as for the rest of his being, though, they wisely steer clear of it. And a man such as Klamm, who is so often the object of yearning and yet so rarely attained, easily takes on a variety of shapes in the imagination of people.
There are also quotes about illusions which fire this theme:
"Illusions are more common than changes"
K is constantly confused and keeps dozing off. He is a very lonely fellow- a stimulant for Schizophrenia and there is constant desire (specially with Freida) for escape from everything:
“There's no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we embrace as if clamped together, I bury my face against you, you yours against me, and no one will ever see us.”
The most apparent theme though is bureaucracy. The castle people appears to be all adult and mostly men. We only get to hear about bureaucracy in there. They enjoy a great power on village people and latter are constantly hero-worshipping them and are engaged in meeting with their demands but it doesn't seem to be great fun to be from Castle either as all gentlemen from there seemed overworked - with files about god-knows-what. The village people feel compelled to justify action and even mistakes made by Castle. Authorities won't give explanations and villagers won't ask one while the seeing K as ignorant for trying to questioning bureaucrats. K finds it difficult to approach authorities - much like the rest. There is this case of Olga's family who has to prove their fault so that they could ask apologise for same. And who were these authorities working for?:
“all [the authorities] did was to guard the distant and invisible interests of distant and invisible masters”
I won’t talk much about plot – it is already much talked about in story itself. The lack of an ending takes away the entire structure of story. K is said to have confided to Max Brod that either his protagonist K would go on living; or at his point of death, Castle notifies him 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".
It probably would have been a great novel - even from Kafka's high standards, had it been complete and perhaps a bit less detailed – in its present form though, I would rather replace it the missing part from ‘The Trial’. Not that I didn't like it, but now I can't live with curiosity of what-happened-next for rest of my life.
On the face of it, ‘The Castle’ may read to a most of us as if it was Kafka’s last joke – after going through long monologues covering pages – analysing, re-analysing and over-analysing each minute event; you suddenly find it ending mid-sentence.
It has some resemblance to ‘The Trial’ which was a work on judiciary – the way it looked like a work on government and bureaucracy. Though unlike shorter and constantly amazing ‘The Trial’, this one is unnecessarily detailed and one can’t make sense of anything from unfinished work. Though ‘The Trial’ was unfinished too – but it was faster to make its points and despite being unfinished was still awesome. This one requires a greater deal of thought before you start making sense of things.
All characters are ignorant of motives that are deriving the scenes and are constantly analysing them to make sense of things. It is annoying and I'm entirely with K when he asks Olga to stop interpreting everything.I'm not judging the great novelist; it was a mere work-in-progress – not yet made presentable. At one point K is talking about his family, at another he is ready to marry a woman he just found.
Kafka probably had planned some great writing in the unwritten part of the book which would have brought out the themes he wanted to explore more clearly. Village people are constantly interpreting Authorities' actions because later won't offer any explanations. Similarly we too are caught into interpreting an unfinished story. When he gave up the project, he didn't imagine that his books would be published after his death. He actually wanted to get his three unfinished novels (The catle, The Trial and Amereca) burned - as he desired from his friend Max Brod. Thank god, later had sense enough not to do so.
What were motifs?
Some say it is theology - with biblical names, first chapter being named 'Arrival' and Castle being seen as something of salvation. There is a outcast family which may denote anti-Semitism. Though he is absent in almost all the book,Klamm's name kept occurring up as if he was a god - absent, unavailable, may be non existant, yet constantly talked about. The villagers are constantly trying to just worst of bureaucrats actions while keeping them in positive light, the later won't explain anything - making bureaucracy comparable to god.
Another theme seems to be Schizophrenia. The name 'Klamm' in czech means illusion. With time Klamm is growing more and more distant from real existence and everything about him grows suspicious with time:
He speaks to Klamm, but is it Klamm? Isn’t it rather someone who merely resembles Klamm? Perhaps at the very most a secretary who is a little like Klamm and goes to great lengths to be even more like him and tries to seem important by affecting Klamm’s drowsy, dreamlike manner. That part of his being is easiest to imitate, many try to do so; as for the rest of his being, though, they wisely steer clear of it. And a man such as Klamm, who is so often the object of yearning and yet so rarely attained, easily takes on a variety of shapes in the imagination of people.
There are also quotes about illusions which fire this theme:
"Illusions are more common than changes"
K is constantly confused and keeps dozing off. He is a very lonely fellow- a stimulant for Schizophrenia and there is constant desire (specially with Freida) for escape from everything:
“There's no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we embrace as if clamped together, I bury my face against you, you yours against me, and no one will ever see us.”
The most apparent theme though is bureaucracy. The castle people appears to be all adult and mostly men. We only get to hear about bureaucracy in there. They enjoy a great power on village people and latter are constantly hero-worshipping them and are engaged in meeting with their demands but it doesn't seem to be great fun to be from Castle either as all gentlemen from there seemed overworked - with files about god-knows-what. The village people feel compelled to justify action and even mistakes made by Castle. Authorities won't give explanations and villagers won't ask one while the seeing K as ignorant for trying to questioning bureaucrats. K finds it difficult to approach authorities - much like the rest. There is this case of Olga's family who has to prove their fault so that they could ask apologise for same. And who were these authorities working for?:
“all [the authorities] did was to guard the distant and invisible interests of distant and invisible masters”
I won’t talk much about plot – it is already much talked about in story itself. The lack of an ending takes away the entire structure of story. K is said to have confided to Max Brod that either his protagonist K would go on living; or at his point of death, Castle notifies him 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".
It probably would have been a great novel - even from Kafka's high standards, had it been complete and perhaps a bit less detailed – in its present form though, I would rather replace it the missing part from ‘The Trial’. Not that I didn't like it, but now I can't live with curiosity of what-happened-next for rest of my life.
fatema_04's review against another edition
‘You were good waiting for you to be great’. Slow paced not in a bad way, I’ve been reading this for months on and off and I don’t have the energy to commit to the second half, especially with how slow it is. It’s still very interesting and absurd but definitely not for someone who struggles to commit to reading, it’s better for someone who reads more consistently.
rayne31's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
wolfgold's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.25
phoenix2's review against another edition
2.0
The Castle is an interesting book, with a smooth pace and clever writing. However, the story is thrilling, yes, but it feels frustrating and a like it's going into circles, without leading to a change. Maybe that is what the book is ment to say after all, that someone can't reach those in power and has to go through all that red tape, along with those who will unquestionably and submittly obay to their orders and keep that paranoia of a system running and alive. But, maybe, the book shouldn't be that long to do so...
sophiedavis's review against another edition
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.0