Kafka''s Castle

This is a detailed analysis of Kafka's novel The Castle, followed by a note on The Trial which points to the resemblance between the two books. Gray's starting point is the patient investigation of what the novel says and does. His object is to avoid any premature decision about 'what Kafka was driving at', for the result of that decision in previous critics was that, armed with a theological, political or psychoanalytical theory that partly fitted, they violated the delicacy and simplified the complexity of the book's operation on the mind. The Castle is not an allegory in which every component 'stands' for some simple thing or quality; it has to be entered and moved about in, the parts referred to each other, the resonances listened to. The Castle is a great work in itself and also has relationships with others in other languages. Gray's exemplary method makes his book valuable to any serious reader of literature.