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1-Page Summary of The Castle
Overall Summary
The Castle is a novel by Franz Kafka, which he started writing in 1922 and was published posthumously in 1926. The novel explores many of the themes that Kafka had explored before, including alienation and the absurd nature of bureaucratic authority. However, it differs from earlier works because it has a more somber tone as well as an ambiguous ending.
The book begins with a man named K arriving at a small, remote village. He goes into the local inn and seeks out a room to stay in for the night but is told that there are no rooms available. He’s offered an old straw mattress to sleep on instead of sleeping on the cold floor, so he accepts it. Later, he wakes up when another young man comes in and tells him that Castle Westwest owns the village and anyone who wants to spend the night there must have permission from Count Westwest himself. K informs him that he was summoned by Castle Westwest because they need someone to survey their land for them. The young man immediately changes his attitude towards K after hearing this news and offers him his bedroom upstairs to sleep in instead of sleeping on a dirty straw mattress downstairs like everyone else has been doing all day long.
The next day, K visits the castle to get permission to live in the village. However, he is unable to make it there and takes shelter at a local tanner’s shop where he feels unwelcome. He returns to his inn and meets two men named Artur who are assistants from the castle. Instead of calling them by their names, K decides just to call them both Artur. A boy named Barnabas gives K a note from his contact at the castle, a man called Klamm. The note instructs him that he must meet with the village mayor instead of going directly into the castle as expected; so, following Barnabas’ lead, thinking they were heading for the castle but finding themselves instead at Barnabas’s home instead of getting closer toward seeing this mysterious man that has been haunting him since yesterday when he arrived in town and was given an envelope with no return address or any indication what was inside except for one word written on it: “K”. One of Barnabas’ sisters takes him back through town towards another inn where she knows her friend Frieda lives because she works as a maid in one of those same hotels there which makes her quite wealthy even though she herself doesn’t have much money because most of it goes straight into supporting her mother whom everyone thinks is crazy but really isn’t…
The mayor apologizes to K for summoning him, but offers him a job as a janitor in the school. K is disappointed and angry, but Frieda encourages him to take the job because he has no other options. They get married, though it’s not clear if they have any feelings for each other beyond their mutual interest in getting closer to Klamm.
K moves into the school with the Arturs. He thinks they’re trying to get him in trouble, so he locks them outside. K tries unsuccessfully to contact Klamm, and goes back to Barnabas’s home where he talks with his sister Olga about her family’s reputation. She tells him that only Barnabas’ connection with the castle keeps them from being shamed by their neighbors because of a rumor that Frieda is having an affair with Jeremias.
K. tries to meet with Klamm, but the villagers are scandalized by this and don’t want him to do it. He realizes that they respect all of the officials in the castle, even though they have no idea what those people do or how their decisions affect them. The villagers offer some explanations for why things happened in the castle, but these contradict each other and are based on assumptions about what’s going on there.
