The Castle by Franz Kafka - Essay Example

The Castle by Franz Kafka From the time Seymour Chatman wanted to analyze film in terms of narratological concepts, narratology became one of the most essential methods of film analysis, in addition to rhetoric and aesthetics. The main contribution of Chatman remains the cinematic narrator that he referred to as non-human agent, “the composite of a large and complex variety of communicating devices” (Chatman 134). These aspects include sound, music, voice, lighting, camera distance, mise-en-scene, and editing among other things. Franz Kafka has achieved a perfect use of narratology, rhetoric and aesthetics in his works. He represents the modernist era showing similarities with notable authors, such as Charles Dickens and Jonathan Swift. Franz Kafka was born at the time of social discord and bureaucratic leadership understood as Prague. He grew up in a city that had lost its cultural dominance because of an overwhelming bureaucracy. He lived in Wossek, a Jewish village. He started writing at a tender age of fourteen. He wrote simple plays for his sisters during their parents birthday parties (Brod 75). He began writing seriously in 1899 experimenting fiction. He began writing his first novel called The Child and the City in 1904 but was not successful because he lost his manuscripts. The second one was Description of a Struggle. The modernism period was a cultural and artistic period at that existed at the beginning of the twentieth century. This period was full of experimentation in terms of art and literature. Artists concentrated on subjective experiences and challenged audiences. Kafka’s works reflect the modernism era. His ideas and philosophy reflect the main themes of the era. The period was marked by expressionism that is seen in Kafka’s novels through the exploration of emotion and spirituality. The struggles between mind and senses and the division of humankind is clearly seen in Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Kafka used the city as the center of his world showing the labyrinthine streets as a reference to his exile from reality. The characters in his novels, such as K. in The Castle feel like strangers moving in an unknown world (Brod 76). Franz Kafka started writing the castle in 1922 when he suffered a nervous breakdown but recuperated. This fact makes some readers to believe that his works at this moment in time reflected the works of a disturbed and unwell author. However, this might not reflect the truth of the matter because the books capture more than themes of disturbance. It is essential to mention that Kafka made an impressive use of narratology in the castle. The fragments seen in The Castle show a progression of narration in writing. Many of the entries show that he depended on inspiration and the occurrence of an idea known as Einfall, which refers to falling into the imagination of a figure, image or situation that could lead to a narrative. This means that the purpose achieved in writing would only be realized after the process has started (Fishelson and Leichter 85). One of the main editors of Kafka’s works comments on his style, Kafka never composed his stories based on existing information or plan. His manuscripts showed that Kafka developed his work without any prior knowledge as if following something to the place it leads. Because of this, most of Kafka’s works were left in fragmentary states because he had no idea of where he wanted to head. Kafka achieved his purpose through a deliberate, obstructive communication that was meant to provoke a disturbed expression on a reader. The communication in Kafka’s work, The Castle shows communication as a problem that Kafka knew. There is a deficiency in communication in the intonation acts of narration achieved by various characters in The Castle. For instance, as Kafka explains about K’s challenge, ““Dealing directly with the authorities wasn’t all that difficult, for no matter how well organized they were, they only had to defend distant and invisible causes on behalf of remote and invisible gentlemen, whereas he, K, was fighting for something vitally close, for himself, and what’s more of his own free will, initially at least, for he was the assailant, and he was not struggling for himself on his own, there were also other forces, which he knew nothing of, but could believe in because of the measures adopted by the authorities.” (Kafka 86) The non-communication seems to be the rule as opposed to human interaction in Kafka’s fiction. In the analysis of the isolation of K. and other characters that he meets as he tries to enter into the castle, communication breakdown is seen clearly. The darkness in the mysterious castle when K. pauses before crossing the bridge to the village shows the difficulty in human communication in the novel (Fishelson and Leichter 56). Kafka achieves this through the long stories told in the novel by the characters. These stories do not help in any way to reveal the darkness that exists in the novel. They give interpretations that are contradictory and unverifiable. The narratological power in the events that take place in The Castle appear to be marginally restricted in terms of the ability to reveal what goes on in the minds of the characters. The narrative progression in the novel is incomplete. It wanders from the beginning and does not reach to the castle. This achieves an overall illusion of movement that is stuck on stasis. The contact that K. tries to make with the castle goes through. K remains in the village waiting for instructions from the castle official (Brod 145). Throughout the novel, readers try to put together the fragments so that they can get an explicable whole of The Castle. Kafka engaged in rhetoric in the whole novel. The narrations cover long stories throughout the novel. For instance, the reader follows K’S course that is disconnected. The reader has to connect the strands into a common thread that can achieve a meaningful outcome. However, as the reader goes on, he discovers that the whole process reflects the destination of the book. The beginning, the middle and the end are all disconnected. The Castel is a dramatic get-away from reality subjected to unsettling events. The first paragraph of the novel is the only part that shows uncontroversial narratorial reference. The Castle is understood through the perspective of K. As Kafka develops his characters, he puts emphasis on their artistic activities together with other features that form the parameters of aesthetics. Kafka’s aesthetics centered on rich and irreproducible aspects of his formal stylistic and tonal accomplishments. His aesthetics are clearly drawn from western metaphysics and philosophy (Fishelson and Leichter 70). The mood of aesthetics influence the tonal variations achieved in any artistic work. Traces of aesthetics in a fictive work show an artists maturity. Kafka’s development of fragments and narrative irony in The Castle and other novels show forms of aesthetics. His tonal, modal interventions and formality show that Kafka had the will to make the lineaments of singular aesthetics. Kafka’s works show richness in aesthetics of fragmentation, inversion, confusion and doubling. Charles Dickens shows a distinctive aesthetic theory based on his works such as Oliver Twist (Fishelson and Leichter 78). Franz Kafka and Charles Dickens have similarities in their works. Kafka admired Dickens, writing as shown in his own work. The Trial and The Castle has similarities with dickens’ Bleak House. Dickens wrote Bleak House in a short time with a non-premeditated construction. All characters are connected to the Court of Chancery, which is the main point of reference in the novel the same way The Castle has been developed. The book is full of unconscious depth. The two authors wrote some of their books in German covering almost the same topics. This shows their similarity in artistic worlds. Franz Kafka explored consciousness and bureaucratic establishments. His works explored lives in contemporary age writing on topics touching on government courts. Kafka identified himself with Jonathan swift in terms of his writing (Brod 98). Before his death, Kafka had read Gulliver’s Travels written by Swift. This book presents the world the same way Kafka perceives it. In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift presents man in a manner that he realizes his animal character. Kafka presents the same view in his novels where he uses animal characters. These animals have the ability to reason with emotions the same way human beings behave. Both artists explore metamorphosis as a dominant theme in their works. Both Swift and Kafka were disgusted with the human body appearance. In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver indicates how the female body of a human being is disgusting. Writing to a friend in 1922, Kafka highlighted the emphasis of Swift on disgusting fact of human body. Therefore, these artists had many characteristics in common (Brod 275). In conclusion, Franz Kafka has used narratology, rhetoric and aesthetics in his works. This features put his works at the center on the modernism era that was marked by bureaucracy. The Castle among other works show narratology and rhetoric. The story is told through narration, such that the book takes on the perspective created by the protagonist in the book. It is also essential to note the confusion and fragmentation in the book that helps create aesthetics. The themes in the book reflect the modernism era and the characteristics of the world that existed around Kafka. The same world shaped the works of authors such as Charles Dickens and Jonathan Swift who have similar styles and themes with Kafka. Works cited Brod, Max. Franz Kafka. London: Da Capo Press, 1995 . Chatman, Seymour. Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1990. Fishelson, David and Aaron Leichter. Franz Kafka's The castle. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2001. Kafka, Franz. The castle. London: Penguin, 2000. Read More