《局外人》这本书可以说是存在主义文学的代表作品，同时，它也是一本当代青年不可不读的经典名著。
《局外人》以“今天，妈妈死了，也许是昨天，我不知道”开始，以“我还希望处决我的那一天有很多人来看，对我发出仇恨的喊叫声”结束。小说以这种不动声色而又蕴含内在力量的平静语调为我们塑造了一个惊世骇俗的“荒谬的人”：对一切都漠然置之的默尔索。
全书分为两个部分，第一部分从默尔索的母亲去世开始，到他在海滩上杀死阿拉伯人为止，是按时间顺序叙述的故事。
默尔索不仅在接到通知母亲去世的电报时没有哭，而且在母亲下葬时也没有哭，他没有要求打开棺材再看母亲最后一眼，反而在母亲的棺材面前抽烟、喝咖啡，人们不禁要愤然了：一个人在母亲下葬时不哭，他还算得是人吗？更有甚者，他竟在此后的第二天，就去海滨游泳，和女友一起去看滑稽影片，并且和她一起回到自己的住处。默尔索的行为越来越让人惊讶愕然，名声不好的邻居要惩罚自己的情妇，求他帮助写一封信，他竟答应了，觉得“没有理由不让他满意”。老板建议他去巴黎开设一个办事处，他竟没有表示什么热情，虽然他“并不愿意使他不快”。对于人人向往的巴黎， 他竟有这样的评价： “很脏。有鸽子， 有黑乎乎的院子。”玛丽要跟他结婚，他说随便怎么样都行。玛丽坚持问默尔索是否真的爱她，她原来指望听到肯定的回答，可是他竟说“大概是不爱她”。
《局外人》远眺凯旋门
这种叙述毫无抒情的意味，而只是默尔索内心自发意识的流露，因而他叙述的接二连三的事件、对话、姿势和感觉之间似乎没有必然的联系，给人以一种不连贯的荒谬之感，因为别人的姿势和语言在他看来都是没有意义的，是不可理解的。惟一确实的存在便是大海、阳光，而大自然却压倒了他，使他莫名其妙地杀了人：“我只觉得铙钹似的太阳扣在我的头上我感到天旋地转。海上泛起一阵闷热的狂风，我觉得天门洞开，向下倾泻大火。我全身都绷紧了，手紧紧握住枪。枪机扳动了”
在第二部分里，牢房代替了大海，社会的意识代替了默尔索自发的意识。司法机构以其固有的逻辑，利用被告过去偶然发生的一些事件把被告虚构成一种他自己都认不出来的形象：即把始终认为自己无罪、对一切都毫不在乎的默尔索硬说成一个冷酷无情、蓄意杀人的魔鬼。因为审讯几乎从不调查杀人案件，而是千方百计把杀人和他母亲之死及他和玛丽的关系联系在一起。
《局外人》咖啡馆
迷迷糊糊地杀了人的默尔索，对法庭上的辩论漠然置之，却非常有兴趣断定自己辩护律师的才华大大不如检察官。就在临刑的前夜，他觉醒了：“面对着充满信息和星斗的夜”，他“第一次向这个世界的动人的冷漠敞开了心扉”。他居然感到他“过去曾经是幸福的”， “现在仍然是幸福的”。他似乎还嫌人们惊讶得不够，接着又说：“为了使我感到不那么孤独，我还希望处决我的那一天有很多人来观看，希望他们对我报以仇恨的喊叫声。”
默尔索因为感受到这个现代社会人际关系的冷漠，而毫不迟疑地远离社会、抛弃社会，可是社会也抛弃了他，他最终成为了一个排除于生活中心的局外人。
《局外人》-专家点评
《局外人》阿尔伯特·加缪
加缪曾经把《局外人》的主题概括为一句话：“在我们的社会里，任何在母亲下葬时不哭的人都有被判死刑的危险。” 这种近乎可笑的说法隐藏着一个十分严酷的逻辑：任何违反社会的基本法则的人必将受到社会的惩罚。这个社会需要和它一致的人，背弃它或反抗它的人都在惩处之列，都有可能让检察官先生说：“我向你们要这个人的脑袋。” 默尔索的脑袋已经被检察官以社会的名义要了去。社会抛弃了默尔索，然而，默尔索宣布：“我过去曾经是幸福的，我现在仍然是幸福的。”谁也不会想到默尔索会有这样的宣告，他通过自己的宣告也抛弃了社会。然而这正是他的觉醒，他认识到了人与世界的分裂，他完成了荒诞的旅程的第一阶段。
谈《局外人》而不谈荒诞，就如同谈萨特的《恶心》而不谈存在主义。加缪在这本书中列举了荒诞的种种表现，例如：人和生活的分离；演员和布景的分离；怀有希望的精神和使之失望的世界之间的分裂；肉体的需要对于使之趋于死亡的时间的反抗；世界本身所具有的、使人的理解成为不可能的那种厚度和陌生性；人对人本身所散发出的非人性感到的不适及其堕落，等等。由于发现了“荒诞”，默尔索的消极、冷漠、无动于衷、执著于瞬间的人生等等顿时具有了一种象征的意义，小说于是从哲学上得到了阐明。因为人和世界的分离，世界于人是荒诞的，人对世界无能为力，因此不抱任何希望，对一切事物都无动于衷。加缪指出：“荒诞，就是确认自己的界限的清醒的理性。”“荒诞的人”就是“那个不否认永恒、但也不为永恒做任何事情的人”。尤其是当加缪指出“一个能用歪理来解释的世界，还是一个熟悉的世界，但是在一个突然被剥夺了幻觉和光明的宇宙中，人就感到自己是个局外人”的时候，我们更会一下子想到默尔索的。“荒诞的人”就是“局外人”，“局外人”就是具有“清醒的理性的人”。
《局外人》阿尔伯特·加缪
小说家加缪同时还有另一重身份，那就是作为存在主义代表人物之一的哲学家加缪。从某种意义上来说，这两种身份的混淆往往容易在小说创作中带来这样一个问题，那就是思想大于形象。从另一个角度来说，对于这类小说评价往往着重于其思想性。通俗地说，那就是加缪的小说，《局外人》也好，《鼠疫》也好，成败与否由其中心思想决定。《纽约时报书评》对《局外人》思想与形式的关系是这样分析的：“中心思想并不是创造性艺术的最高形式，但是，它却有可能重要到这个地步：如果为了艺术批判的缘故而抛弃它则将会亵渎人类精神。”阅读这部小说就可以让人明白，《局外人》并不是一个哲学观念的简单图解，而是一部成功的小说。它以奇特而又新颖的笔调塑造了一个显然与众不同的人物，不想和别人有任何联系、只想保持自己个性不受干扰的人物。《局外人》的读者可以不知道默尔索什么模样，是高还是矮，是胖还是瘦，但他们不可能不记住他，不可能不在许多场合想到他。小说以自身的独立的存在展示了人与世界的关系。它迫使我们向自己提出这样的问题：世界是晦涩的，还是清晰的？是合乎理性的，还是不可理喻的？人在这个世界上是幸福的，还是痛苦的？人与这个世界的关系是和谐一致的，还是分裂矛盾的？
加缪的小说风格介于传统小说和新小说之间。一方面，存在主义文学是反传统的，作者从不介入小说，从不干预主人公的命运，从来不发表自己的议论；另一方面，小说的语言又极其简单明晰，可以说具有古典主义的散文风格，具有极强的表现力和感染力。《局外人》成为一本于平淡中见深度、从枯涩中出哲理的很不平常的书。
《局外人》阿尔伯特·加缪
加缪还写过以论荒诞为主旨的长篇哲学随笔《西西弗神话》。事实上，人们的确是常常用《西西弗神话》来解释《局外人》，而开此先例的正是萨特。他最早把这两本书联系在一起，认定《局外人》是“荒诞的证明”，是一本“关于荒诞和反对荒诞的书”。也可以说《西西弗神话》正是《局外人》的注脚。加缪在1941年2月21日的一则手记中写道：“完成《神话》。三个‘荒诞’到此结束。”这三个“荒诞”指的就是：哲学随笔《西西弗神话》，小说《局外人》和剧本《卡利古拉》。
当加缪因车祸去世后，《纽约时报》这样概括他的思想： “加缪在荒诞的车祸中丧身，实属辛辣的哲学讽刺。因为他思想的中心是如何对人类处境做出一个思想深刻人士的正确回答，人们毫不感到意外，我们的时代接受了加缪的观点。血腥的二次世界大战，可怕的氢弹威胁，这一切使现代社会能够接受加缪严肃的哲学，并使之长存于人们的心中。”
如今40多年过去了，人们没有忘记他，人们也不会忘记他，越来越多的人在研究他的著作与思想。《局外人》也一再重版，印数突破千万册。加缪在世的时候由于是一个在贫穷、普通的家庭里长大的孩子，因而常被痛恨他的人贬低，孤独之时他总对他的一个知己说： “但愿他们了解真正的我。”
他是与文学沙龙、文学名人、荣誉、勋章保持距离的“局外人”，但他的思考却深入到了现代社会的腹地。
《局外人》-妙语佳句
大家都很幸运，这个世界上只有幸运的人。
在所有智力健全的人都或多或少期望他们所爱的人死去。
《局外人》以“今天，妈妈死了，也许是昨天，我不知道”开始，以“我还希望处决我的那一天有很多人来看，对我发出仇恨的喊叫声”结束。小说以这种不动声色而又蕴含内在力量的平静语调为我们塑造了一个惊世骇俗的“荒谬的人”：对一切都漠然置之的默尔索。
全书分为两个部分，第一部分从默尔索的母亲去世开始，到他在海滩上杀死阿拉伯人为止，是按时间顺序叙述的故事。
默尔索不仅在接到通知母亲去世的电报时没有哭，而且在母亲下葬时也没有哭，他没有要求打开棺材再看母亲最后一眼，反而在母亲的棺材面前抽烟、喝咖啡，人们不禁要愤然了：一个人在母亲下葬时不哭，他还算得是人吗？更有甚者，他竟在此后的第二天，就去海滨游泳，和女友一起去看滑稽影片，并且和她一起回到自己的住处。默尔索的行为越来越让人惊讶愕然，名声不好的邻居要惩罚自己的情妇，求他帮助写一封信，他竟答应了，觉得“没有理由不让他满意”。老板建议他去巴黎开设一个办事处，他竟没有表示什么热情，虽然他“并不愿意使他不快”。对于人人向往的巴黎， 他竟有这样的评价： “很脏。有鸽子， 有黑乎乎的院子。”玛丽要跟他结婚，他说随便怎么样都行。玛丽坚持问默尔索是否真的爱她，她原来指望听到肯定的回答，可是他竟说“大概是不爱她”。
《局外人》远眺凯旋门
这种叙述毫无抒情的意味，而只是默尔索内心自发意识的流露，因而他叙述的接二连三的事件、对话、姿势和感觉之间似乎没有必然的联系，给人以一种不连贯的荒谬之感，因为别人的姿势和语言在他看来都是没有意义的，是不可理解的。惟一确实的存在便是大海、阳光，而大自然却压倒了他，使他莫名其妙地杀了人：“我只觉得铙钹似的太阳扣在我的头上我感到天旋地转。海上泛起一阵闷热的狂风，我觉得天门洞开，向下倾泻大火。我全身都绷紧了，手紧紧握住枪。枪机扳动了”
在第二部分里，牢房代替了大海，社会的意识代替了默尔索自发的意识。司法机构以其固有的逻辑，利用被告过去偶然发生的一些事件把被告虚构成一种他自己都认不出来的形象：即把始终认为自己无罪、对一切都毫不在乎的默尔索硬说成一个冷酷无情、蓄意杀人的魔鬼。因为审讯几乎从不调查杀人案件，而是千方百计把杀人和他母亲之死及他和玛丽的关系联系在一起。
《局外人》咖啡馆
迷迷糊糊地杀了人的默尔索，对法庭上的辩论漠然置之，却非常有兴趣断定自己辩护律师的才华大大不如检察官。就在临刑的前夜，他觉醒了：“面对着充满信息和星斗的夜”，他“第一次向这个世界的动人的冷漠敞开了心扉”。他居然感到他“过去曾经是幸福的”， “现在仍然是幸福的”。他似乎还嫌人们惊讶得不够，接着又说：“为了使我感到不那么孤独，我还希望处决我的那一天有很多人来观看，希望他们对我报以仇恨的喊叫声。”
默尔索因为感受到这个现代社会人际关系的冷漠，而毫不迟疑地远离社会、抛弃社会，可是社会也抛弃了他，他最终成为了一个排除于生活中心的局外人。
《局外人》-专家点评
《局外人》阿尔伯特·加缪
加缪曾经把《局外人》的主题概括为一句话：“在我们的社会里，任何在母亲下葬时不哭的人都有被判死刑的危险。” 这种近乎可笑的说法隐藏着一个十分严酷的逻辑：任何违反社会的基本法则的人必将受到社会的惩罚。这个社会需要和它一致的人，背弃它或反抗它的人都在惩处之列，都有可能让检察官先生说：“我向你们要这个人的脑袋。” 默尔索的脑袋已经被检察官以社会的名义要了去。社会抛弃了默尔索，然而，默尔索宣布：“我过去曾经是幸福的，我现在仍然是幸福的。”谁也不会想到默尔索会有这样的宣告，他通过自己的宣告也抛弃了社会。然而这正是他的觉醒，他认识到了人与世界的分裂，他完成了荒诞的旅程的第一阶段。
谈《局外人》而不谈荒诞，就如同谈萨特的《恶心》而不谈存在主义。加缪在这本书中列举了荒诞的种种表现，例如：人和生活的分离；演员和布景的分离；怀有希望的精神和使之失望的世界之间的分裂；肉体的需要对于使之趋于死亡的时间的反抗；世界本身所具有的、使人的理解成为不可能的那种厚度和陌生性；人对人本身所散发出的非人性感到的不适及其堕落，等等。由于发现了“荒诞”，默尔索的消极、冷漠、无动于衷、执著于瞬间的人生等等顿时具有了一种象征的意义，小说于是从哲学上得到了阐明。因为人和世界的分离，世界于人是荒诞的，人对世界无能为力，因此不抱任何希望，对一切事物都无动于衷。加缪指出：“荒诞，就是确认自己的界限的清醒的理性。”“荒诞的人”就是“那个不否认永恒、但也不为永恒做任何事情的人”。尤其是当加缪指出“一个能用歪理来解释的世界，还是一个熟悉的世界，但是在一个突然被剥夺了幻觉和光明的宇宙中，人就感到自己是个局外人”的时候，我们更会一下子想到默尔索的。“荒诞的人”就是“局外人”，“局外人”就是具有“清醒的理性的人”。
《局外人》阿尔伯特·加缪
小说家加缪同时还有另一重身份，那就是作为存在主义代表人物之一的哲学家加缪。从某种意义上来说，这两种身份的混淆往往容易在小说创作中带来这样一个问题，那就是思想大于形象。从另一个角度来说，对于这类小说评价往往着重于其思想性。通俗地说，那就是加缪的小说，《局外人》也好，《鼠疫》也好，成败与否由其中心思想决定。《纽约时报书评》对《局外人》思想与形式的关系是这样分析的：“中心思想并不是创造性艺术的最高形式，但是，它却有可能重要到这个地步：如果为了艺术批判的缘故而抛弃它则将会亵渎人类精神。”阅读这部小说就可以让人明白，《局外人》并不是一个哲学观念的简单图解，而是一部成功的小说。它以奇特而又新颖的笔调塑造了一个显然与众不同的人物，不想和别人有任何联系、只想保持自己个性不受干扰的人物。《局外人》的读者可以不知道默尔索什么模样，是高还是矮，是胖还是瘦，但他们不可能不记住他，不可能不在许多场合想到他。小说以自身的独立的存在展示了人与世界的关系。它迫使我们向自己提出这样的问题：世界是晦涩的，还是清晰的？是合乎理性的，还是不可理喻的？人在这个世界上是幸福的，还是痛苦的？人与这个世界的关系是和谐一致的，还是分裂矛盾的？
加缪的小说风格介于传统小说和新小说之间。一方面，存在主义文学是反传统的，作者从不介入小说，从不干预主人公的命运，从来不发表自己的议论；另一方面，小说的语言又极其简单明晰，可以说具有古典主义的散文风格，具有极强的表现力和感染力。《局外人》成为一本于平淡中见深度、从枯涩中出哲理的很不平常的书。
《局外人》阿尔伯特·加缪
加缪还写过以论荒诞为主旨的长篇哲学随笔《西西弗神话》。事实上，人们的确是常常用《西西弗神话》来解释《局外人》，而开此先例的正是萨特。他最早把这两本书联系在一起，认定《局外人》是“荒诞的证明”，是一本“关于荒诞和反对荒诞的书”。也可以说《西西弗神话》正是《局外人》的注脚。加缪在1941年2月21日的一则手记中写道：“完成《神话》。三个‘荒诞’到此结束。”这三个“荒诞”指的就是：哲学随笔《西西弗神话》，小说《局外人》和剧本《卡利古拉》。
当加缪因车祸去世后，《纽约时报》这样概括他的思想： “加缪在荒诞的车祸中丧身，实属辛辣的哲学讽刺。因为他思想的中心是如何对人类处境做出一个思想深刻人士的正确回答，人们毫不感到意外，我们的时代接受了加缪的观点。血腥的二次世界大战，可怕的氢弹威胁，这一切使现代社会能够接受加缪严肃的哲学，并使之长存于人们的心中。”
如今40多年过去了，人们没有忘记他，人们也不会忘记他，越来越多的人在研究他的著作与思想。《局外人》也一再重版，印数突破千万册。加缪在世的时候由于是一个在贫穷、普通的家庭里长大的孩子，因而常被痛恨他的人贬低，孤独之时他总对他的一个知己说： “但愿他们了解真正的我。”
他是与文学沙龙、文学名人、荣誉、勋章保持距离的“局外人”，但他的思考却深入到了现代社会的腹地。
《局外人》-妙语佳句
大家都很幸运，这个世界上只有幸运的人。
在所有智力健全的人都或多或少期望他们所爱的人死去。
西西弗的神话In the essay, Camus introduces his philosophy of the absurd: man's futile search for meaning, unity and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world devoid of God and eternal truths or values. Does the realization of the absurd require suicide? Camus answers: "No. It requires revolt." He then outlines several approaches to the absurd life. The final chapter compares the absurdity of man's life with the situation of Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again. The essay concludes, "The struggle itself...is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
The work can be seen in relation to other works by Camus: the novel The Stranger (1942), the play Caligula (1945), and especially the essay The Rebel (1951).
Summary
The essay is dedicated to Pascal Pia and is organized in three chapters and one appendix.
Chapter 1: An Absurd Reasoning
Camus undertakes to answer what he considers to be the only question of philosophy that matters: Does the realization of the meaninglessness and absurdity of life necessarily require suicide?
He begins by describing the absurd condition: much of our life is built on the hope for tomorrow yet tomorrow brings us closer to death and is the ultimate enemy; people live as if they didn't know about the certainty of death; once stripped of its common romanticisms, the world is a foreign, strange and inhuman place; true knowledge is impossible and rationality and science cannot explain the world: their stories ultimately end in meaningless abstractions, in metaphors. "From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all."
It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when "my appetite for the absolute and for unity" meets "the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle."
He then characterizes a number of philosophies that describe and attempt to deal with this feeling of the absurd, by Heidegger, Jaspers, Shestov, Kierkegaard and Husserl. All of these, he claims, commit "philosophical suicide" by reaching conclusions that contradict the original absurd position, either by abandoning reason and turning to God, as in the case of Kierkegaard and Shestov, or by elevating reason and ultimately arriving at ubiquitous Platonic forms and an abstract god, as in the case of Husserl.
For Camus, who sets out to take the absurd seriously and follow it to its final conclusions, these "leaps" cannot convince. Taking the absurd seriously means acknowledging the contradiction between the desire of human reason and the unreasonable world. Suicide, then, also must be rejected: without man, the absurd cannot exist. The contradiction must be lived; reason and its limits must be acknowledged, without false hope. However, the absurd can never be accepted: it requires constant confrontation, constant revolt.
While the question of human freedom in the metaphysical sense loses interest to the absurd man, he gains freedom in a very concrete sense: no longer bound by hope for a better future or eternity, without a need to pursue life's purpose or to create meaning, "he enjoys a freedom with regard to common rules".
To embrace the absurd implies embracing all that the unreasonable world has to offer. Without a meaning in life, there is no scale of values. "What counts is not the best living but the most living."
Thus, Camus arrives at three consequences from the full acknowledging of the absurd: revolt, freedom and passion.
Chapter 2: The Absurd Man
How should the absurd man live? Clearly, no ethical rules apply, as they are all based on higher powers or on justification. "Integrity has no need of rules." 'Everything is permitted' "is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact."
Camus then goes on to present examples of the absurd life. He begins with Don Juan, the serial seducer who lives the passionate life to the fullest. "There is no noble love but that which recognizes itself to be both short-lived and exceptional."
The next example is the actor, who depicts ephemeral lives for ephemeral fame. "He demonstrates to what degree appearing creates being." "In those three hours he travels the whole course of the dead-end path that the man in the audience takes a lifetime to cover."
Camus' third example of the absurd man is the conqueror, the warrior who forgoes all promises of eternity to affect and engage fully in human history. He chooses action over contemplation, aware of the fact that nothing can last and no victory is final.
Chapter 3: The Myth of Sisyphus
In the last chapter, Camus outlines the legend of Sisyphus who defied the gods and put Death in chains so that no human needed to die. When Death was eventually liberated and it came time for Sisyphus himself to die, he concocted a deceit which let him escape from the underworld. Finally captured, the gods decided on his punishment: for all eternity, he would have to push a rock up a mountain; on the top, the rock rolls down again and Sisyphus has to start over. Camus sees Sisyphus as the absurd hero who lives life to the fullest, hates death and is condemned to a meaningless task.
Camus presents Sisyphus's ceaseless and pointless toil as a metaphor for modern lives spent working at futile jobs in factories and offices. "The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious."
Camus is interested in Sisyphus' thoughts when marching down the mountain, to start anew. This is the truly tragic moment, when the hero becomes conscious of his wretched condition. He does not have hope, but "[t]here is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." Acknowledging the truth will conquer it; Sisyphus, just like the absurd man, keeps pushing. Camus claims that when Sisyphus acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty of his fate, he is freed to realize the absurdity of his situation and to reach a state of contented acceptance. With a nod to the similarly cursed Greek hero Oedipus, Camus concludes that "all is well," indeed, that "One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
Appendix
The essay contains an appendix titled "Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka". While Camus acknowledges that Kafka's work represents an exquisite description of the absurd condition, he maintains that Kafka fails as an absurd writer because his work retains a glimmer of hope.
The Plague (Fr. La Peste) is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story of medical workers finding solidarity in their labour as the Algerian city of Oran is swept by a plague epidemic. It asks a number of questions relating to the nature of destiny and the human condition. The characters in the book, ranging from doctors to vacationers to fugitives, all help to show the effects the plague has on a populace.
The novel is believed to be based on the cholera epidemic that killed a large percentage of Oran's population in 1849 following French colonization, but the novel is placed in the 1940s.[1] Oran and its environs were struck by disease multiple times before Camus published this novel. According to a research report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Oran was decimated by the plague in 1556 and 1678, but outbreaks after European colonization, in 1921 (185 cases), 1931 (76 cases), and 1944 (95 cases), were very far from the scale of the epidemic described in the novel.
The Plague is considered an existentialist classic despite Camus' objection to the label.[2][3] The narrative tone is similar to Kafka's, especially in The Trial, where individual sentences potentially have multiple meanings, the material often pointedly resonating as stark allegory of phenomenal consciousness and the human condition. Camus included a dim-witted character misreading The Trial as a mystery novel as an oblique homage. The novel has been read as a metaphorical treatment of the French resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II.
Although Camus's approach in the book is severe, his narrator emphasizes the ideas that we ultimately have no control, irrationality of life is inevitable, and he further illustrates the human reaction towards the ‘absurd’. The Plague represents how the world deals with the philosophical notion of the Absurd, a theory which Camus himself helped to define.
The novel is believed to be based on the cholera epidemic that killed a large percentage of Oran's population in 1849 following French colonization, but the novel is placed in the 1940s.[1] Oran and its environs were struck by disease multiple times before Camus published this novel. According to a research report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Oran was decimated by the plague in 1556 and 1678, but outbreaks after European colonization, in 1921 (185 cases), 1931 (76 cases), and 1944 (95 cases), were very far from the scale of the epidemic described in the novel.
The Plague is considered an existentialist classic despite Camus' objection to the label.[2][3] The narrative tone is similar to Kafka's, especially in The Trial, where individual sentences potentially have multiple meanings, the material often pointedly resonating as stark allegory of phenomenal consciousness and the human condition. Camus included a dim-witted character misreading The Trial as a mystery novel as an oblique homage. The novel has been read as a metaphorical treatment of the French resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II.
Although Camus's approach in the book is severe, his narrator emphasizes the ideas that we ultimately have no control, irrationality of life is inevitable, and he further illustrates the human reaction towards the ‘absurd’. The Plague represents how the world deals with the philosophical notion of the Absurd, a theory which Camus himself helped to define.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), by John Fowles, is a period novel inspired by the 1823 novel Ourika, by Claire de Duras, which Fowles translated to English during 1977 (and revised in 1994). He was a great aficionado of Thomas Hardy, and, in particular, likened his heroine, Sarah Woodruff, to Tess Durbeyfield, the protagonist of Hardy’s popular novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891).
During 1981, director Karel Reisz and writer Harold Pinter adapted the novel as an eponymous film; During 2006, it was adapted for the stage, by Mark Healy, in a version which toured the UK that year. In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present.
Plot summary
The novel's protagonist is Sarah Woodruff, the title Woman, also known by the nickname of “Tragedy”, and by the unfortunate nickname “The French Lieutenant’s Whore”. She lives in the coastal town of Lyme Regis, as a disgraced woman, supposedly abandoned by a French naval officer named Varguennes--married, unknown to her, to another woman-- with whom she had supposedly had an affair and who had returned to France.
Sarah is portrayed ambiguously: is she a genuine, ill-used woman? Is she a sly, manipulative character using her own self-pity to get Charles to succumb to her? Is she merely a victim of the notion of gender as perceived by upper-middle-class people of the 19th century?
She spends her limited time-off at the Cobb [sea wall], staring at the sea. One day, she is seen there by the gentleman Charles Smithson and his fiancée, Ernestina Freeman, the shallow-minded daughter of a wealthy tradesman. Ernestina tells Charles something of Sarah’s story, and he develops a strong curiosity about her. Eventually, he and she meet clandestinely, during which times Sarah tells Charles her history, and asks for his support, mostly emotional. Despite trying to remain objective, Charles eventually sends Sarah to Exeter, where he, during a journey, cannot resist stopping in to visit and see her. At the time she has suffered an ankle injury; he visits her alone and after they have made love he realised that she is, contrary to the rumours, a virgin. Simultaneously, he learns that his prospective inheritance from an elder uncle is in jeopardy; the uncle is engaged to a woman young enough to bear him an heir.
From there, the novelist offers three different endings for The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
* First ending: Charles marries Ernestina, and their marriage is unhappy; Sarah’s fate is unknown. Charles tells Ernestina about an encounter with whom he implies is the “French Lieutenant’s Whore”, but elides the sordid details, and the matter is ended. This ending, however, might be dismissed as a daydream, before the alternative events of the subsequent meeting with Ernestina are described.
Before the second- and third endings, the narrator — whom the novelist wants the reader to believe is John Fowles, himself — appears as a minor character sharing a train carriage with Charles. He flips a coin to determine the order in which he will portray the two, other possible endings, emphasising their equal plausibility.
* Second ending: Charles and Sarah become intimate; he ends his engagement to Ernestina, with unpleasant consequences. He is disgraced, and his uncle marries, then produces an heir. Sarah flees to London without telling the enamoured Charles, who searches for her for years, before finding her living with several artists (likely the Rossettis), enjoying an artistic, creative life. He then sees he has fathered a child with her; as a family, their future is open, with possible reunion implied.
* Third ending: the narrator re-appears, standing outside the house where the second ending occurred; at the aftermath. He turns back his pocket watch by fifteen minutes, before leaving in his carriage. Events are the same as in the second-ending version, but, when Charles finds Sarah again, in London, their reunion is sour. It is possible that their union was childless; Sarah does not tell Charles about one, and does not express interest for continuing the relationship. He leaves the house, deciding to return to America, and sees the carriage, in which the narrator was thought gone. Raising the question: is Sarah a manipulating, lying woman of few morals, exploiting Charles’s obvious love to get what she wants?
En route, Fowles the novelist discourses upon the difficulties of controlling the characters, and offers analyses of differences in 19th-century customs and class, the theories of Charles Darwin, the poetry of Matthew Arnold, Lord Tennyson, and the literature of Thomas Hardy. He questions the role of the author — when speaking of how the Charles character “disobeys” his orders; the characters have discrete lives of their own in the novel. Philosophically, Existentialism is mentioned several times during the story, and in particular detail at the end, after the portrayals of the two, apparent, equally possible endings.
During 1981, director Karel Reisz and writer Harold Pinter adapted the novel as an eponymous film; During 2006, it was adapted for the stage, by Mark Healy, in a version which toured the UK that year. In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present.
Plot summary
The novel's protagonist is Sarah Woodruff, the title Woman, also known by the nickname of “Tragedy”, and by the unfortunate nickname “The French Lieutenant’s Whore”. She lives in the coastal town of Lyme Regis, as a disgraced woman, supposedly abandoned by a French naval officer named Varguennes--married, unknown to her, to another woman-- with whom she had supposedly had an affair and who had returned to France.
Sarah is portrayed ambiguously: is she a genuine, ill-used woman? Is she a sly, manipulative character using her own self-pity to get Charles to succumb to her? Is she merely a victim of the notion of gender as perceived by upper-middle-class people of the 19th century?
She spends her limited time-off at the Cobb [sea wall], staring at the sea. One day, she is seen there by the gentleman Charles Smithson and his fiancée, Ernestina Freeman, the shallow-minded daughter of a wealthy tradesman. Ernestina tells Charles something of Sarah’s story, and he develops a strong curiosity about her. Eventually, he and she meet clandestinely, during which times Sarah tells Charles her history, and asks for his support, mostly emotional. Despite trying to remain objective, Charles eventually sends Sarah to Exeter, where he, during a journey, cannot resist stopping in to visit and see her. At the time she has suffered an ankle injury; he visits her alone and after they have made love he realised that she is, contrary to the rumours, a virgin. Simultaneously, he learns that his prospective inheritance from an elder uncle is in jeopardy; the uncle is engaged to a woman young enough to bear him an heir.
From there, the novelist offers three different endings for The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
* First ending: Charles marries Ernestina, and their marriage is unhappy; Sarah’s fate is unknown. Charles tells Ernestina about an encounter with whom he implies is the “French Lieutenant’s Whore”, but elides the sordid details, and the matter is ended. This ending, however, might be dismissed as a daydream, before the alternative events of the subsequent meeting with Ernestina are described.
Before the second- and third endings, the narrator — whom the novelist wants the reader to believe is John Fowles, himself — appears as a minor character sharing a train carriage with Charles. He flips a coin to determine the order in which he will portray the two, other possible endings, emphasising their equal plausibility.
* Second ending: Charles and Sarah become intimate; he ends his engagement to Ernestina, with unpleasant consequences. He is disgraced, and his uncle marries, then produces an heir. Sarah flees to London without telling the enamoured Charles, who searches for her for years, before finding her living with several artists (likely the Rossettis), enjoying an artistic, creative life. He then sees he has fathered a child with her; as a family, their future is open, with possible reunion implied.
* Third ending: the narrator re-appears, standing outside the house where the second ending occurred; at the aftermath. He turns back his pocket watch by fifteen minutes, before leaving in his carriage. Events are the same as in the second-ending version, but, when Charles finds Sarah again, in London, their reunion is sour. It is possible that their union was childless; Sarah does not tell Charles about one, and does not express interest for continuing the relationship. He leaves the house, deciding to return to America, and sees the carriage, in which the narrator was thought gone. Raising the question: is Sarah a manipulating, lying woman of few morals, exploiting Charles’s obvious love to get what she wants?
En route, Fowles the novelist discourses upon the difficulties of controlling the characters, and offers analyses of differences in 19th-century customs and class, the theories of Charles Darwin, the poetry of Matthew Arnold, Lord Tennyson, and the literature of Thomas Hardy. He questions the role of the author — when speaking of how the Charles character “disobeys” his orders; the characters have discrete lives of their own in the novel. Philosophically, Existentialism is mentioned several times during the story, and in particular detail at the end, after the portrayals of the two, apparent, equally possible endings.
Sophie's World (Sofies verden in the original Norwegian) is a novel by Jostein Gaarder, published in 1991. It was originally written in Norwegian, but has since been translated into English (1995) and at least 53 other languages. It sold over 30 million copies and is one of the most successful Norwegian novels outside Norway.
Mostly consisting of dialogues between Sophie Amundsen and a mysterious man named Alberto Knox, interwoven with an increasingly bizarre and mysterious plot, Sophie's World acts as both a novel and a basic guide to philosophy.
Plot summary
Sophie Amundsen is fourteen years old when the book begins. She begins a strange correspondence course in philosophy. Every day, a letter comes to her mailbox that contains a few questions and then later in the day a package comes with some typed pages describing the ideas of a philosopher who dealt with the issues raised by the questions. Although at first she does not know, later on Sophie learns that Alberto Knox is the name of the philosopher who is teaching her. He sends her packages via his dog Hermes. Alberto first tells Sophie that philosophy is extremely relevant to life and that if we do not question and ponder our very existence we are not really living. Then he proceeds to go through the history of western philosophy. Alberto teaches Sophie about the ancient myths that people had in the days before they tried to come up with natural explanations for the processes in the world. Then she learns about the natural philosophers who were concerned with change. Next Alberto describes Democritus and the theory of indivisible atoms underlying all of nature as well as the concept of fate.
At the same time as she takes the philosophy course, Sophie receives a strange postcard sent to Hilde Møller Knag, care of Sophie. The postcard is from Hilde's father and wishes Hilde happy birthday. Sophie is confused, and more so when she finds a scarf with Hilde's name on it. She does not know what is happening but she is sure that Hilde and the philosophy course must somehow be connected. She learns about Socrates, who was wise enough to know that he knew nothing. Then Alberto sends her a video that shows him in present day Athens and somehow he seems to go back in time to ancient Athens. She learns about Plato and his world of ideas and then about Aristotle, who critiqued Plato, classified much of the natural world, and founded logic and our theory of concepts.
Then, as Sophie's education continues, the Hilde situation begins to get more complicated. She finds many more postcards to Hilde, and some of them are even dated on June 15, the day Sophie will turn 15. The problem is that June 15 is still over a month away. She discovers some of this with her best friend Joanna, and one of the postcards tells Hilde that one day she will meet Sophie and also mentions Joanna. Strange things are happening that the girls cannot figure out. Sophie's relationship with her mother becomes somewhat strained as she tries both to cover up the correspondence with Alberto and to practice her philosophical thinking on her mom. Meanwhile, Alberto teaches Sophie about Jesus and the meeting of Indo-European and Semitic culture. She learns about St. Augustine, St. Aquinas, and the christianization of Greek philosophy that occurred in the Middle Ages. By this time, Sophie has met Alberto and he begins hinting that the philosophy is about to get extremely relevant to the strange things that are happening to her.
Sophie learns about the focus on humanity in the Renaissance and the extremes of the Baroque and then Alberto focuses on some key philosophers. Urgently, he teaches her about Descartes, who doubted, and by doing so knew at least that he could doubt. They move on to Spinoza as it becomes clear that Hilde's father has some awesome power over them. Then Sophie learns about the empiricists. Locke believed in natural rights and that everything we know is gained from experience. Hume, an important influence on Kant, showed that our actions are guided by feelings and warned against making laws based upon our experiences. But Berkeley is most important to Sophie because he suggested that perhaps our entire lives were inside the mind of God. And Alberto says that their lives are inside the mind of Albert Knag, Hilde's father.
At this point the story switches to Hilde's point of view. On June 15, the day she turns fifteen, Hilde receives a birthday gift from her father entitled Sophie's World. She begins to read and is enthralled. We follow the rest of Sophie's story from Hilde's perspective. Hilde becomes certain that Sophie exists, that she is not just a character in a book. Alberto has a plan to escape Albert Knag's mind, and they must finish the philosophy course before that can happen. He teaches Sophie about the Enlightenment and its humane values and about Kant and his unification of empiricist and rationalist thought. Things in Sophie's life have become completely insane but she and Alberto know they must figure out a way to do something. It will have to occur on the night of June 15, when Hilde's father returns home. They learn about the world spirit of Romanticism, Hegel's dialectical view of history, and Kierkegaard's belief that the individual's existence is primary. Meanwhile, Hilde plans a surprise for her father on his return home. They rush through Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Sartre, desperate to come up with a plan to escape even though everything they do is known by Hilde's father. Then at the end of Sophie's World, the book that Hilde is reading, while at a party for Sophie on June 15, Alberto and Sophie disappear. Hilde's father comes home and they talk about the book, and Hilde is sure that Sophie exists somewhere. Meanwhile, Sophie and Alberto have a new existence as spirit. They have escaped from Albert Knag's mind but they are invisible to other people and can walk right through them. Sophie wants to try to interfere in the world of Hilde and her father, and at the end of the book she is learning how to do so.
Mostly consisting of dialogues between Sophie Amundsen and a mysterious man named Alberto Knox, interwoven with an increasingly bizarre and mysterious plot, Sophie's World acts as both a novel and a basic guide to philosophy.
Plot summary
Sophie Amundsen is fourteen years old when the book begins. She begins a strange correspondence course in philosophy. Every day, a letter comes to her mailbox that contains a few questions and then later in the day a package comes with some typed pages describing the ideas of a philosopher who dealt with the issues raised by the questions. Although at first she does not know, later on Sophie learns that Alberto Knox is the name of the philosopher who is teaching her. He sends her packages via his dog Hermes. Alberto first tells Sophie that philosophy is extremely relevant to life and that if we do not question and ponder our very existence we are not really living. Then he proceeds to go through the history of western philosophy. Alberto teaches Sophie about the ancient myths that people had in the days before they tried to come up with natural explanations for the processes in the world. Then she learns about the natural philosophers who were concerned with change. Next Alberto describes Democritus and the theory of indivisible atoms underlying all of nature as well as the concept of fate.
At the same time as she takes the philosophy course, Sophie receives a strange postcard sent to Hilde Møller Knag, care of Sophie. The postcard is from Hilde's father and wishes Hilde happy birthday. Sophie is confused, and more so when she finds a scarf with Hilde's name on it. She does not know what is happening but she is sure that Hilde and the philosophy course must somehow be connected. She learns about Socrates, who was wise enough to know that he knew nothing. Then Alberto sends her a video that shows him in present day Athens and somehow he seems to go back in time to ancient Athens. She learns about Plato and his world of ideas and then about Aristotle, who critiqued Plato, classified much of the natural world, and founded logic and our theory of concepts.
Then, as Sophie's education continues, the Hilde situation begins to get more complicated. She finds many more postcards to Hilde, and some of them are even dated on June 15, the day Sophie will turn 15. The problem is that June 15 is still over a month away. She discovers some of this with her best friend Joanna, and one of the postcards tells Hilde that one day she will meet Sophie and also mentions Joanna. Strange things are happening that the girls cannot figure out. Sophie's relationship with her mother becomes somewhat strained as she tries both to cover up the correspondence with Alberto and to practice her philosophical thinking on her mom. Meanwhile, Alberto teaches Sophie about Jesus and the meeting of Indo-European and Semitic culture. She learns about St. Augustine, St. Aquinas, and the christianization of Greek philosophy that occurred in the Middle Ages. By this time, Sophie has met Alberto and he begins hinting that the philosophy is about to get extremely relevant to the strange things that are happening to her.
Sophie learns about the focus on humanity in the Renaissance and the extremes of the Baroque and then Alberto focuses on some key philosophers. Urgently, he teaches her about Descartes, who doubted, and by doing so knew at least that he could doubt. They move on to Spinoza as it becomes clear that Hilde's father has some awesome power over them. Then Sophie learns about the empiricists. Locke believed in natural rights and that everything we know is gained from experience. Hume, an important influence on Kant, showed that our actions are guided by feelings and warned against making laws based upon our experiences. But Berkeley is most important to Sophie because he suggested that perhaps our entire lives were inside the mind of God. And Alberto says that their lives are inside the mind of Albert Knag, Hilde's father.
At this point the story switches to Hilde's point of view. On June 15, the day she turns fifteen, Hilde receives a birthday gift from her father entitled Sophie's World. She begins to read and is enthralled. We follow the rest of Sophie's story from Hilde's perspective. Hilde becomes certain that Sophie exists, that she is not just a character in a book. Alberto has a plan to escape Albert Knag's mind, and they must finish the philosophy course before that can happen. He teaches Sophie about the Enlightenment and its humane values and about Kant and his unification of empiricist and rationalist thought. Things in Sophie's life have become completely insane but she and Alberto know they must figure out a way to do something. It will have to occur on the night of June 15, when Hilde's father returns home. They learn about the world spirit of Romanticism, Hegel's dialectical view of history, and Kierkegaard's belief that the individual's existence is primary. Meanwhile, Hilde plans a surprise for her father on his return home. They rush through Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Sartre, desperate to come up with a plan to escape even though everything they do is known by Hilde's father. Then at the end of Sophie's World, the book that Hilde is reading, while at a party for Sophie on June 15, Alberto and Sophie disappear. Hilde's father comes home and they talk about the book, and Hilde is sure that Sophie exists somewhere. Meanwhile, Sophie and Alberto have a new existence as spirit. They have escaped from Albert Knag's mind but they are invisible to other people and can walk right through them. Sophie wants to try to interfere in the world of Hilde and her father, and at the end of the book she is learning how to do so.
The Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of short fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world; Elias Canetti described it as "one of the few great and perfect works of the poetic imagination written during this century". The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect.
Plot summary
Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed from a human into a monstrous insect. Rather than lament his transformation, Gregor worries about how he will get to his job as a traveling salesman; Gregor is the sole financial provider for his parents and sister, Grete, and their comfort is dependent on his ability to work. When Gregor's supervisor arrives at the house and demands Gregor come out of his room, Gregor manages to roll out of bed and unlock his door. His appearance horrifies his family and supervisor; his supervisor flees and Gregor attempts to chase after him, but his family shoos him back into his room. Grete attempts to care for her brother by providing him with milk and the stale, rotten food he now prefers. Gregor also develops the fears of an insect, being effectively shooed away by hissing voices and stamping feet. However, Gregor remains a devoted and loving son, and takes to hiding beneath a sofa whenever someone enters his room in order to shield them from his insect form. When alone, he amuses himself by looking out of his window and crawling up the walls and on the ceiling.
No longer able to rely on Gregor's income, the other family members are forced to take on jobs and Grete's caretaking deteriorates. One day, when Gregor emerges from his room, his father chases him around the dining room table and pelts him with apples. One of the apples becomes embedded in his back, causing an infection. Due to his infection and his hunger, Gregor is soon barely able to move at all. Later, his parents take in lodgers and use Gregor's room as a dumping area for unwanted objects. Gregor becomes dirty, covered in dust and old bits of rotten food. One day, Gregor hears Grete playing her violin to entertain the lodgers. Gregor is attracted to the music, and slowly walks into the dining room despite himself, entertaining a fantasy of getting his beloved sister to join him in his room and play her violin for him. The lodgers see him and give notice, refusing to pay the rent they owe, even threatening to sue the family for harboring him while they stayed there. Grete determines that the monstrous insect is no longer Gregor, since Gregor would have left them out of love and taken their burden away, and claims that they must get rid of it. Gregor retreats to his room and collapses, finally succumbing to his wound.
The point of view shifts as, upon discovery of his corpse, the family feels an enormous burden has been lifted from them, and start planning for the future again. The family discovers that they aren't doing financially bad at all, especially since, following Gregor's demise, they can take a smaller flat. The brief process of forgetting Gregor and shutting him from their lives is quickly completed. The tale concludes with the mother and father taking note of Grete's new womanhood and growth.
Characters
Gregor Samsa
Gregor is the protagonist of the story. He works hard as a travelling salesman to provide for his sister and parents. He wakes up one morning as a monstrous insect. After the transformation, Gregor was unable to work, causing his father to work at a bank to provide for the family and pay owed debts.
Grete Samsa
Grete is Gregor's younger sister, who becomes his caretaker after the metamorphosis. At the beginning Grete and Gregor have a strong relationship but this relationship fades with time. While Grete originally volunteers to feed him and clean his room, throughout the story she grows more and more impatient with the task to the point of deliberately leaving messes in his room out of spite. She plays the violin and dreams of going to the conservatorium, a dream that Gregor was going to make come true. He was going to announce this on Christmas Eve. To help provide an income for the family after Gregor's transformation she starts working as a salesgirl in a shop.
Mr Samsa
Gregor's father owes a large debt to Gregor's boss, which is why Gregor can't quit his hated job. He is lazy and elderly, while Gregor works, but when, after the metamorphosis, Gregor is unable to provide for the family, he is shown to be an able-bodied worker. He also attempts to kill Gregor when he is discovered in his monstrous state.
Mrs Samsa
Mrs Samsa is the mother of Grete and Gregor. She is initially shocked at Gregor's transformation, however eventually decides she wants to enter his room. This seems too much for her to handle, and Gregor hides away from her in an attempt to protect her. Mrs Samsa is conflicted in her maternal concern and sympathy for Gregor, and her inherent fear of his new monstrous form.
Chief Clerk
The Chief Clerk is Gregor's boss and the person to whom Mr Samsa is in debt. He pressures Gregor to prepare for his workday with a urgency pertaining to the precarious position of his job.
Tenants
Three tenants are invited to live with the Samsas to supplement their income. The family shows great deference to these tenants throughout the length of their stay. They are fussy and cannot stand dirtiness, eventually leading to the point when they discover Gregor and threaten the family with a lawsuit, apparently believing he's just an extraordinarily large insect.
Lost in translation
The opening sentence of the novella is famous in English:
"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous insect."
"Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt."
Kafka's sentences often deliver an unexpected impact just before the full stop—that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved due to the construction of sentences in German that require that the participle be positioned at the end of the sentence; in the above sentence, the equivalent of 'changed' is the final word, 'verwandelt'. Such constructions are not replicable in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same effect found in the original text.
English translators have often sought to render the word Ungeziefer as "insect", but this is not strictly accurate. In Middle German, Ungeziefer literally means "unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice" and is sometimes used colloquially to mean "bug" – a very general term, unlike the scientific sounding "insect". Kafka had no intention of labeling Gregor as any specific thing, but instead wanted to convey Gregor's disgust at his transformation. The phrasing used in the David Wyllie translation and Joachim Neugroschel is "transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin".
However, "vermin" denotes in English many animals (particularly mice, rats and foxes) and in Kafka's letter to his publisher of 25 October 1915, in which he discusses his concern about the cover illustration for the first edition, he uses the term "Insekt", saying "The insect itself is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a distance." While this shows his concern not to give precise information about the type of creature Gregor becomes, the use of the general term "insect" can therefore be defended on the part of translators wishing to improve the readability of the end text.
Ungeziefer has sometimes been translated as "cockroach", "dung beetle", "beetle", and other highly specific terms. The term "dung beetle" or Mistkäfer is in fact used in the novella by the cleaning lady near the end of the story, but it is not used in the narration. Ungeziefer also denotes a sense of separation between him and his environment: he is unclean and must therefore be excluded.
Vladimir Nabokov, who was a lepidopterist as well as writer and literary critic, insisted that Gregor was not a cockroach, but a beetle with wings under his shell, and capable of flight — if only he had known it. Nabokov left a sketch annotated "just over three feet long" on the opening page of his (heavily corrected) English teaching copy. In his accompanying lecture notes, Nabokov discusses the type of vermin Gregor has been transformed into, concluding that Gregor "is not, technically, a dung beetle. He is merely a big beetle. (I must add that neither Gregor nor Kafka saw that beetle any too clearly.)"
Adaptations to other media
There are several film versions, including:
* Metamorphosis (1987) at the Internet Movie Database
* Die Verwandlung (1975) at the Internet Movie Database
* Förvandlingen (1976/I) at the Internet Movie Database
* The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa (1977) at the Internet Movie Database by Caroline Leaf
* The Metamorphosis of Franz Kafka (1993) by Carlos Atanes.
* Prevrashcheniye (2002) at the Internet Movie Database
* Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis acoustical liberation from LibriVox.
* Metamorfosis (2004) at the Internet Movie Database
* A Metamorfose (2007) at the Internet Movie Database
* Immersive Kafka: The Metamorphosis / Atvaltozas (2010) by Sandor Kardos, Barnabas Takacs.
A stage adaptation was performed by Steven Berkoff in 1969. Berkoff's text was also used for the libretto to Brian Howard's 1983 opera Metamorphosis. Another stage adaptation was performed in 2006 by the Icelandic company Vesturport, showing at the Lyric Hammersmith, London. That adaptation is set to be performed in the Icelandic theater fall of 2008. Another stage adaptation was performed in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2005 by the Centre for Asian Theatre. That performance is still continuing in Bangladesh. The Lyric Theatre Company toured the UK in 2006 with its stage adaptation of Metamorphosis, accompanied by a unique soundtrack performed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. American comic artist Peter Kuper illustrated a graphic-novel version, first published by the Crown Publishing Group in 2003. Megan Rees is currently working on a new stage adaptation that should be published by 2010.
Allusions/references from other works
Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (February 2008)
Stage
* Philip Glass composed incidental music for two separate theater productions of the story. These two themes, along with two themes from the Errol Morris film The Thin Blue Line, were incorporated into a five-part piece of music for solo piano entitled Metamorphosis.
Literature
Jacob M. Appel's H. E. Francis Award-winning story, "The Vermin Episode," retells The Metamorphosis from the point-of-view of the Samsas' neighbors.
Film
* The 2005 film The Producers includes a scene where the two protagonists are searching for a sure flop. The opening for the play of Metamorphosis is read and rejected for being too good.
* The 2008 film The Reader features Ralph Fiennes reading aloud from Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.
* In 2002 a Russian version titled Prevrashchenie was directed by Valery Fokin with Yevgeny Mironov as Gregor.
* In 1995, the actor Peter Capaldi won an Oscar for his short-film Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life. The plot of the film has the author (played by Richard E. Grant) trying to write the opening line of Metamorphosis and experimenting with various things that Gregor might turn into, such as a banana or a kangaroo. The film is also notable for a number of Kafkaesque moments.
* In 1993 Carlos Atanes directed The Metamorphosis of Franz Kafka, a controversial adaptation based on The Metamorphosis as well on biographical details from Kafka's family.
* in Noah Baumbach's Squid and the Whale, Jeff Daniels and Jesse Eisenberg make several references to The Metamorphosis
Animation
* In The Venture Bros. episode "Mid-Life Chrysalis", Dr. Venture's transformation into a caterpillar slightly mirrors that of Gregor Samsa's transformation.
* A reference appears in the 2006 Aardman Animations feature film Flushed Away when a refrigerator falls through the floor of the protagonist Rita's home and a giant cockroach appears reading a copy of The Metamorphosis.
* In the short-lived TV animated series Extreme Ghostbusters, season 1, episode 11 ("The Crawler"), the bug monster (that resembles a giant insect) calls himself Gregor Samsa when trying to seduce Janine to be his queen in his human form.
* Jack Feldstein created a tribute to Gregor Samsa and The Metamorphosis in his stream-of-consciousness neon animation "Shmetamorphosis" about a bug who hysterically bursts into therapist Bertold Krasenstein's office, begging to be saved.
* In the first season of the anime Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei there is an episode titled "One Morning, When Gregor Samsa Awoke, He was Carrying a Mikoshi", an obvious parody of the first line of The Metamorphosis.
Comics
* American cartoonist Robert Crumb drew an illustrated adaptation of the novella which appears in the book Introducing Kafka.
* In the comic book Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez, the eponymous Johnny is plagued by a roach that keeps appearing in his house no matter how many times he kills it (whether or not this roach is immortal or simply many different roaches is up to interpretation) and is affectionately named "Mr. Samsa".
* In The Simpsons book Treehouse of Horror Spook-tacular, Matt Groening did a spoof on the metamorphosis, entitling it Metamorphosimpsons. In addition, in one of the episodes, Lisa attends a place called "Cafe Kafka", which is shown to be a popular place for college students, and features several posters of cockroaches in Bohemian-like poses.
* Peter Kuper (illustrator of Kafka's Give It Up!) also adapted Kafka's Metamorphosis.
Television
* In the TV series Supernatural, the 4th episode of season 4 is named "Metamorphosis."
* The TV series Smallville, which is a retelling of Superman's early years as a teenager, alludes to Kafka's story in the season one, episode "Metamorphosis" where the 'Freak of the Week' is transformed into a being with insect-like abilities after suffering from exposure to meteor-infected insects (Kryptonite-induced).
* In the TV series Home Movies there is an entire episode based on Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis as a Rock Opera.
* In the TV series The Venture Bros., in the 8th episode of season 1, Dr. Venture undergoes a metamorphosis and alludes to the story.
* In the TV series The Ricky Gervais Show, in the 11th episode of season 1, named "Beetles," the characters discuss the potential of Karl Pilkingtons's metamorphosis.
Music
* Gregor Samsa is the name of an American post-rock band.
* The Rolling Stones' 1975 album Metamorphosis features cover art of the band members with insect heads.
* Showbread has a song named "Sampsa Meets Kafka". The misspelling of Samsa is intentional. Josh Dies the lead singer also lists Kafka as one of his biggest influences.
* The name of the German darkwave/metal/neoclassical band Samsas Traum is inspired by the story.
Video games
* Bad Mojo is a 1996 computer game, the storyline of which is loosely based on The Metamorphosis.
* Spore: Galactic Adventures made an adventure version of The Metamorphosis.
* In the 2001 Wizardry 8, the first boss is a gigantic cockroach named "Gregor".
Plot summary
Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed from a human into a monstrous insect. Rather than lament his transformation, Gregor worries about how he will get to his job as a traveling salesman; Gregor is the sole financial provider for his parents and sister, Grete, and their comfort is dependent on his ability to work. When Gregor's supervisor arrives at the house and demands Gregor come out of his room, Gregor manages to roll out of bed and unlock his door. His appearance horrifies his family and supervisor; his supervisor flees and Gregor attempts to chase after him, but his family shoos him back into his room. Grete attempts to care for her brother by providing him with milk and the stale, rotten food he now prefers. Gregor also develops the fears of an insect, being effectively shooed away by hissing voices and stamping feet. However, Gregor remains a devoted and loving son, and takes to hiding beneath a sofa whenever someone enters his room in order to shield them from his insect form. When alone, he amuses himself by looking out of his window and crawling up the walls and on the ceiling.
No longer able to rely on Gregor's income, the other family members are forced to take on jobs and Grete's caretaking deteriorates. One day, when Gregor emerges from his room, his father chases him around the dining room table and pelts him with apples. One of the apples becomes embedded in his back, causing an infection. Due to his infection and his hunger, Gregor is soon barely able to move at all. Later, his parents take in lodgers and use Gregor's room as a dumping area for unwanted objects. Gregor becomes dirty, covered in dust and old bits of rotten food. One day, Gregor hears Grete playing her violin to entertain the lodgers. Gregor is attracted to the music, and slowly walks into the dining room despite himself, entertaining a fantasy of getting his beloved sister to join him in his room and play her violin for him. The lodgers see him and give notice, refusing to pay the rent they owe, even threatening to sue the family for harboring him while they stayed there. Grete determines that the monstrous insect is no longer Gregor, since Gregor would have left them out of love and taken their burden away, and claims that they must get rid of it. Gregor retreats to his room and collapses, finally succumbing to his wound.
The point of view shifts as, upon discovery of his corpse, the family feels an enormous burden has been lifted from them, and start planning for the future again. The family discovers that they aren't doing financially bad at all, especially since, following Gregor's demise, they can take a smaller flat. The brief process of forgetting Gregor and shutting him from their lives is quickly completed. The tale concludes with the mother and father taking note of Grete's new womanhood and growth.
Characters
Gregor Samsa
Gregor is the protagonist of the story. He works hard as a travelling salesman to provide for his sister and parents. He wakes up one morning as a monstrous insect. After the transformation, Gregor was unable to work, causing his father to work at a bank to provide for the family and pay owed debts.
Grete Samsa
Grete is Gregor's younger sister, who becomes his caretaker after the metamorphosis. At the beginning Grete and Gregor have a strong relationship but this relationship fades with time. While Grete originally volunteers to feed him and clean his room, throughout the story she grows more and more impatient with the task to the point of deliberately leaving messes in his room out of spite. She plays the violin and dreams of going to the conservatorium, a dream that Gregor was going to make come true. He was going to announce this on Christmas Eve. To help provide an income for the family after Gregor's transformation she starts working as a salesgirl in a shop.
Mr Samsa
Gregor's father owes a large debt to Gregor's boss, which is why Gregor can't quit his hated job. He is lazy and elderly, while Gregor works, but when, after the metamorphosis, Gregor is unable to provide for the family, he is shown to be an able-bodied worker. He also attempts to kill Gregor when he is discovered in his monstrous state.
Mrs Samsa
Mrs Samsa is the mother of Grete and Gregor. She is initially shocked at Gregor's transformation, however eventually decides she wants to enter his room. This seems too much for her to handle, and Gregor hides away from her in an attempt to protect her. Mrs Samsa is conflicted in her maternal concern and sympathy for Gregor, and her inherent fear of his new monstrous form.
Chief Clerk
The Chief Clerk is Gregor's boss and the person to whom Mr Samsa is in debt. He pressures Gregor to prepare for his workday with a urgency pertaining to the precarious position of his job.
Tenants
Three tenants are invited to live with the Samsas to supplement their income. The family shows great deference to these tenants throughout the length of their stay. They are fussy and cannot stand dirtiness, eventually leading to the point when they discover Gregor and threaten the family with a lawsuit, apparently believing he's just an extraordinarily large insect.
Lost in translation
The opening sentence of the novella is famous in English:
"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous insect."
"Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt."
Kafka's sentences often deliver an unexpected impact just before the full stop—that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved due to the construction of sentences in German that require that the participle be positioned at the end of the sentence; in the above sentence, the equivalent of 'changed' is the final word, 'verwandelt'. Such constructions are not replicable in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same effect found in the original text.
English translators have often sought to render the word Ungeziefer as "insect", but this is not strictly accurate. In Middle German, Ungeziefer literally means "unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice" and is sometimes used colloquially to mean "bug" – a very general term, unlike the scientific sounding "insect". Kafka had no intention of labeling Gregor as any specific thing, but instead wanted to convey Gregor's disgust at his transformation. The phrasing used in the David Wyllie translation and Joachim Neugroschel is "transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin".
However, "vermin" denotes in English many animals (particularly mice, rats and foxes) and in Kafka's letter to his publisher of 25 October 1915, in which he discusses his concern about the cover illustration for the first edition, he uses the term "Insekt", saying "The insect itself is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a distance." While this shows his concern not to give precise information about the type of creature Gregor becomes, the use of the general term "insect" can therefore be defended on the part of translators wishing to improve the readability of the end text.
Ungeziefer has sometimes been translated as "cockroach", "dung beetle", "beetle", and other highly specific terms. The term "dung beetle" or Mistkäfer is in fact used in the novella by the cleaning lady near the end of the story, but it is not used in the narration. Ungeziefer also denotes a sense of separation between him and his environment: he is unclean and must therefore be excluded.
Vladimir Nabokov, who was a lepidopterist as well as writer and literary critic, insisted that Gregor was not a cockroach, but a beetle with wings under his shell, and capable of flight — if only he had known it. Nabokov left a sketch annotated "just over three feet long" on the opening page of his (heavily corrected) English teaching copy. In his accompanying lecture notes, Nabokov discusses the type of vermin Gregor has been transformed into, concluding that Gregor "is not, technically, a dung beetle. He is merely a big beetle. (I must add that neither Gregor nor Kafka saw that beetle any too clearly.)"
Adaptations to other media
There are several film versions, including:
* Metamorphosis (1987) at the Internet Movie Database
* Die Verwandlung (1975) at the Internet Movie Database
* Förvandlingen (1976/I) at the Internet Movie Database
* The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa (1977) at the Internet Movie Database by Caroline Leaf
* The Metamorphosis of Franz Kafka (1993) by Carlos Atanes.
* Prevrashcheniye (2002) at the Internet Movie Database
* Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis acoustical liberation from LibriVox.
* Metamorfosis (2004) at the Internet Movie Database
* A Metamorfose (2007) at the Internet Movie Database
* Immersive Kafka: The Metamorphosis / Atvaltozas (2010) by Sandor Kardos, Barnabas Takacs.
A stage adaptation was performed by Steven Berkoff in 1969. Berkoff's text was also used for the libretto to Brian Howard's 1983 opera Metamorphosis. Another stage adaptation was performed in 2006 by the Icelandic company Vesturport, showing at the Lyric Hammersmith, London. That adaptation is set to be performed in the Icelandic theater fall of 2008. Another stage adaptation was performed in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2005 by the Centre for Asian Theatre. That performance is still continuing in Bangladesh. The Lyric Theatre Company toured the UK in 2006 with its stage adaptation of Metamorphosis, accompanied by a unique soundtrack performed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. American comic artist Peter Kuper illustrated a graphic-novel version, first published by the Crown Publishing Group in 2003. Megan Rees is currently working on a new stage adaptation that should be published by 2010.
Allusions/references from other works
Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (February 2008)
Stage
* Philip Glass composed incidental music for two separate theater productions of the story. These two themes, along with two themes from the Errol Morris film The Thin Blue Line, were incorporated into a five-part piece of music for solo piano entitled Metamorphosis.
Literature
Jacob M. Appel's H. E. Francis Award-winning story, "The Vermin Episode," retells The Metamorphosis from the point-of-view of the Samsas' neighbors.
Film
* The 2005 film The Producers includes a scene where the two protagonists are searching for a sure flop. The opening for the play of Metamorphosis is read and rejected for being too good.
* The 2008 film The Reader features Ralph Fiennes reading aloud from Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.
* In 2002 a Russian version titled Prevrashchenie was directed by Valery Fokin with Yevgeny Mironov as Gregor.
* In 1995, the actor Peter Capaldi won an Oscar for his short-film Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life. The plot of the film has the author (played by Richard E. Grant) trying to write the opening line of Metamorphosis and experimenting with various things that Gregor might turn into, such as a banana or a kangaroo. The film is also notable for a number of Kafkaesque moments.
* In 1993 Carlos Atanes directed The Metamorphosis of Franz Kafka, a controversial adaptation based on The Metamorphosis as well on biographical details from Kafka's family.
* in Noah Baumbach's Squid and the Whale, Jeff Daniels and Jesse Eisenberg make several references to The Metamorphosis
Animation
* In The Venture Bros. episode "Mid-Life Chrysalis", Dr. Venture's transformation into a caterpillar slightly mirrors that of Gregor Samsa's transformation.
* A reference appears in the 2006 Aardman Animations feature film Flushed Away when a refrigerator falls through the floor of the protagonist Rita's home and a giant cockroach appears reading a copy of The Metamorphosis.
* In the short-lived TV animated series Extreme Ghostbusters, season 1, episode 11 ("The Crawler"), the bug monster (that resembles a giant insect) calls himself Gregor Samsa when trying to seduce Janine to be his queen in his human form.
* Jack Feldstein created a tribute to Gregor Samsa and The Metamorphosis in his stream-of-consciousness neon animation "Shmetamorphosis" about a bug who hysterically bursts into therapist Bertold Krasenstein's office, begging to be saved.
* In the first season of the anime Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei there is an episode titled "One Morning, When Gregor Samsa Awoke, He was Carrying a Mikoshi", an obvious parody of the first line of The Metamorphosis.
Comics
* American cartoonist Robert Crumb drew an illustrated adaptation of the novella which appears in the book Introducing Kafka.
* In the comic book Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez, the eponymous Johnny is plagued by a roach that keeps appearing in his house no matter how many times he kills it (whether or not this roach is immortal or simply many different roaches is up to interpretation) and is affectionately named "Mr. Samsa".
* In The Simpsons book Treehouse of Horror Spook-tacular, Matt Groening did a spoof on the metamorphosis, entitling it Metamorphosimpsons. In addition, in one of the episodes, Lisa attends a place called "Cafe Kafka", which is shown to be a popular place for college students, and features several posters of cockroaches in Bohemian-like poses.
* Peter Kuper (illustrator of Kafka's Give It Up!) also adapted Kafka's Metamorphosis.
Television
* In the TV series Supernatural, the 4th episode of season 4 is named "Metamorphosis."
* The TV series Smallville, which is a retelling of Superman's early years as a teenager, alludes to Kafka's story in the season one, episode "Metamorphosis" where the 'Freak of the Week' is transformed into a being with insect-like abilities after suffering from exposure to meteor-infected insects (Kryptonite-induced).
* In the TV series Home Movies there is an entire episode based on Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis as a Rock Opera.
* In the TV series The Venture Bros., in the 8th episode of season 1, Dr. Venture undergoes a metamorphosis and alludes to the story.
* In the TV series The Ricky Gervais Show, in the 11th episode of season 1, named "Beetles," the characters discuss the potential of Karl Pilkingtons's metamorphosis.
Music
* Gregor Samsa is the name of an American post-rock band.
* The Rolling Stones' 1975 album Metamorphosis features cover art of the band members with insect heads.
* Showbread has a song named "Sampsa Meets Kafka". The misspelling of Samsa is intentional. Josh Dies the lead singer also lists Kafka as one of his biggest influences.
* The name of the German darkwave/metal/neoclassical band Samsas Traum is inspired by the story.
Video games
* Bad Mojo is a 1996 computer game, the storyline of which is loosely based on The Metamorphosis.
* Spore: Galactic Adventures made an adventure version of The Metamorphosis.
* In the 2001 Wizardry 8, the first boss is a gigantic cockroach named "Gregor".
The Castle (German: Das Schloß) is a novel by Franz Kafka. In it a protagonist, known only as K., struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities of a castle who govern the village where he wants to work as a land surveyor. Kafka died before finishing the work, but suggested it would end with the Land Surveyor dying in the village; the castle notifying him on his death bed 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". Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is about alienation, bureaucracy, and the seemingly endless frustrations of man's attempts to stand against the system.
History of the novel
Kafka began writing The Castle on the evening of January 27, 1922, the day he arrived at the mountain resort of Spindlermühle (now in the Czech Republic). A picture taken of him upon his arrival shows him by a horse-drawn sleigh in the snow in a setting reminiscent of The Castle. Hence, the significance that the first few chapters of the handwritten manuscript were written in first person and at some point later changed by Kafka to a third person narrator, 'K.'
Max Brod
Kafka died prior to finishing The Castle and it is questionable whether Kafka intended on finishing it if he had survived his tuberculosis. On separate occasions he told his friend Max Brod of two different conditions: K., the book's protagonist, would continue to reside and die in the village; the castle notifying him on his death bed 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" , but then on September 11, 1922 in a letter to Max Brod, he said he was giving up on the book and would never return to it. As it is, the book ends mid-sentence.
Although Brod was instructed by Kafka to destroy all his works on his death, he did not and set about publishing Kafka's writings. The Castle was originally published in German in 1926 by the publisher Kurt Wolff Verlag of Munich. This edition sold far less than the 1500 copies that were printed. It was republished in 1935 by Schocken Verlag in Berlin, and in 1946 by Schocken Books of New York.
Brod had to heavily edit the work to ready it for publication. His goal was to gain acceptance of the work and the author, not to maintain the structure of Kafka's writing. This would play heavily in the future of the translations and continues to be the center of discussion on the text. Brod donated the manuscript to Oxford University.
Brod placed a strong religious significance to the symbolism of the castle. This is one possible interpretation of the work based on numerous Judeo-Christian references as noted by many including Arnold Heidsieck.
Malcolm Pasley
The publisher, Salmen Schocken, soon realized the translations were "bad" and in 1940 desired a "completely different approach". In 1961 Malcolm Pasley got access to all of Kafka's works, except The Trial, and deposited them in Oxford's Bodleian library. Pasley and a team of scholars (Gerhard Neumann, Malcolm Pasley, Jost Schillemeit, and Jürgen Born) started publishing the works in 1982 through S. Fischer Verlag. Das Schloß was published that year as a two volume set — the novel in the first volume, and the fragments, deletions and editor's notes in a second volume. This team restored the original German text to its full, and incomplete state, including the unique Kafka punctuation considered critical to the style.
Stroemfeld/Roter Stern
Interpretations of Kafka's intent for the manuscript are ongoing. Stroemfeld/Roter Stern Verlag is working for the rights to publish another critical edition with manuscript and transcription side-by-side. But they have met with resistance from the Kafka heirs and Pasley. This edition is not yet available.
Major editions
* 1930 Translators: Willa and Edwin Muir. Based on the First German edition, by Max Brod. Published By Secker & Warburg in England and Alfred A. Knopf in the United States.
* 1941 Translators: Willa and Edwin Muir. Edition include an Homage by Thomas Mann.
* 1954 Translators: Willa and Edwin Muir additional sections translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. "Definitive edition". Based on the Schocken 1951 Definitive edition .
* 1994 Translators: Muir, et al. Preface by Irving Howe.
* 1997 Translator: J. A. Underwood, Introduction: Idris Parry. Based on Pasley Critical German Text.
* 1998 Translator: Mark Harman Based on Pasley Critical German Text.
The title
The title, Das Schloß, may be translated as "the castle" or "the lock". It is also similar to Der Schluß (close or end). The castle is locked and closed to K and the townspeople; neither can gain access.
Plot
The narrator, K. arrives in the village, governed by the castle. When seeking shelter at the town inn, he gives himself out to be a land surveyor summoned by the castle authorities. He is quickly notified that his castle contact is an official named Klamm, who, in the introductory note, informs K. he will report to the Council Chairman.
The Council Chairman informs K. that, through a mix up in communication between the castle and the village, he was erroneously requested but, trying to accommodate K., the Council Chairman offers him a position in the service of the school teacher as a janitor. Meanwhile, K., unfamiliar with the customs, bureaucracy and processes of the village, continues to attempt to reach the official Klamm, who is not accessible.
The villagers hold the officials and the castle in the highest regard, justifying, quite elaborately at times, the actions of the officials, even though they do not appear to know what officials do or why they do it; they simply defend it. The number of assumptions and justifications about the functions of the officials and their dealings are enumerated through lengthy monologues of the villagers. Everyone appears to have an explanation for the official's actions that appear to be founded on assumptions and gossip. One of the more obvious contradictions between the "official word" and the village conception is the dissertation by the secretary Erlanger on Frieda's required return to service as a barmaid. K. is the only villager that knows that the request is being forced by the castle (even though Frieda may be the genesis), with no regard for anyone in the village, only Klamm. Pepi and Jeremiah quickly come to their conclusions and do not hesitate to state them.
The castle is the ultimate bureaucracy with copious paperwork that the bureaucracy maintains is "flawless". This flawlessness is of course a lie; it is a flaw in the paperwork that has brought K. to the village. There are other failures of the system which are occasionally referred to. K. witnesses a flagrant misprocessing after his nighttime interrogation by Erlanger as a servant destroys paperwork when he cannot determine who the recipient should be.
The castle's occupants appear to be all adult men and there is little reference to the castle other than to its bureaucratic functions. The two notable instances are the reference to a fire brigade and that Otto Brunswick's wife is self declared as from the castle. The latter builds the importance of Hans (Otto's son) in K's eyes, as a way to gain access to the castle officials.
The functions of the officials are never mentioned. The officials that are discussed have one or more secretaries that do their work in their village. Although the officials come to the village they do not interact with the villagers unless they need female companionship, implied to be sexual.
Characters
Note: The Muir translations refer to the Herrenhof Inn where the Harman translations translate this to the Gentleman's Inn. Below all references to the inn where the officials stay in the village is the Herrenhof Inn since this was the first, and potentially more widely read, translation.
Character Description
K., the Land-Surveyor The protagonist of the story, recognized as a land surveyor, employed as the school janitor, and a stranger to the townspeople. He spends most of the novel trying to overcome the bureaucracy of the village and to contact the castle official Klamm.
Frieda A former barmaid at the Herrenhof, who is K.'s fiancée for most of the novel. She often finds herself torn between her duty to K. and her fears regarding his over-zealousness. She eventually leaves K. and ends up in the arms of his former assistant, Jeremiah (who has since become a waitperson at the Herrenhof).
Hans, landlord
(Bridge Inn) Nephew of the original owner of the inn. According to his wife, Gardena, he is lazy and overly nice to K.
Gardena, landlady
(Bridge Inn) The self proclaimed firebrand of the Bridge Inn she is a former short-term mistress to Klamm and very distrustful of K.'s motives. She remains infatuated with Klamm.
Barnabas, a messenger A messenger of the castle assigned to K. He is new to the service. K. is instructed to use him to communicate with the official Klamm. He is very immature and sensitive.
Arthur and Jeremiah, K's assistants
(Artur and Jeremias in Harman edition) Shortly after his arrival in the village, K. is given two assistants to help him with his various needs. They are a continual source of frustration for him, however, and he eventually drives them from his service through his brutal treatment. They have been assigned to K., to make him happy, by the official Galater who was deputizing for Klamm at the time.
Mayor/Superintendent
(Village Council Chairman in Harman edition) Assigned by Klamm to give K. his assignment and hence is his superior. He explains to K why he is not needed as a land surveyor. He offers K. the job of school janitor to the dismay of the Teacher.
Mizzi, the mayor's wife The wife and assistant of the Mayor, Gardena refers to her as the one who does the work.
Klamm An elusive castle official who is K.'s Castle Authority. Like the other Castle officials in the book, his actual area of expertise is never mentioned. K. spends a large portion of the novel trying to secure a meeting with Klamm. K., it seems, fixes many of his hopes for a successful resolution to his problems upon this meeting with Klamm. He has at least two secretaries—Erlanger (First Secretary) and Momus.
In Czech (and Kafka was able to speak and read/write Czech) "klam" means "illusion."
Momus, Klamm's secretary Handles all written work for and receives all petitions to Klamm. He is also secretary for Vallabne, who is not mentioned again in the novel.
Erlanger, Klamm's secretary The First Secretary of Klamm who is sent to "interrogate" K, but only gives him a short message.
Olga, Barnabas' sister The older sister of Amalia and Barnabas. She helps K. on his quest, partly by telling him the story of why her family is considered outcasts and by teaching him some of the village customs.
Amalia, Barnabas' sister Younger sister of Barnabas and Olga. She was disgraced in the village after rudely turning down a summons from the castle official Sortini for sexual favors.
Barnabas' Father The father of Olga, Amalia and Barnabas. Past village cobbler and notable fireman. After Amalia's disgraceful interactions with Sortini's messenger, his business is ruined and he is stripped of his fire credentials
Barnabas' Mother The mother of Olga, Amalia and Barnabas.
Otto Brunswick, son-in-law of Lasemann
(brother-in-law of Lasemann in Harman edition) Hans Brunswick's father. Opportunistically takes over Barnabas' father's customers as the Barnabas family falls into disrepute from Amalia's rude treatment of Sortini's Messenger. According to the Mayor, Brunswick was the only person in the village that desired that a land surveyor be hired. No reason for this is given.
Frau Brunswick Hans Brunswick's Mother. She refers to herself as "from the castle" and is the only reference to a female at the castle.
Hans, a sympathetic Student A student at the school where K is a janitor. Offers to help K and K uses him to attempt to find ways to get to the castle through his mother.
Herrenhof Landlord Landlord of the Herrenhof Inn.
Herrenhof Landlady Well dressed landlady at the Herrenhof Inn. Seems to be the matriarch of the Inn (as is Gardena at the Bridge Inn). Is distrustful of K.
Galater He is the castle official that assigned the assistants to K. He was also "rescued" by Barnabas' father in a minor fire at the Herrenhof Inn.
Brügel
(Bürgel in Harman edition) A Secretary of a castle official, Friedrich. Friedrich is not mentioned again in the book, but in deleted text is referred to as an official who is falling out of favor. Brügel is a long winded secretary who muses about Castle interrogations with K, when the latter errantly enters his room at the Herrenhof Inn.
Sordini Castle secretary who exhaustively manages any transactions at the castle for his department and is suspicious of any potential error.
Sortini Castle official associated with the village fire brigade who solicits Amalia with a sexually explicit and rude request to come to his room at the Herrenhof.
Teacher When K. becomes the janitor at the school, the teacher becomes K.'s de facto superior. He does not approve of K. working at the school, but does not appear to have the authority to terminate K's appointment.
Miss Gisa, the school mistress The assistant school teacher who is courted by Schwarzer and also dislikes K.
Schwarzer An under-castellan's son who appears to have given up living in the castle to court Miss Gisa and become her student teacher.
Pepi A former chamber maid who is promoted to Frieda's barmaid position when the latter leaves her position at the Herrenhoff to live with K. She was a chambermaid with Emilie and Hennriette
Lasemann, a tanner, father-in-law of Otto Brunswick
(brother-in-law of Otto Brunswick in Harman edition) The village tanner that offers a few hours shelter to K. during on his first full day in the village.
Gerstacker, a Coachman Initially suspicious of K. but gives him a free sleigh back to the Bridge Inn after refusing to provide a ride to the castle. At the end of the book attempts to befriend K. since he believes K. has clout with Erlanger.
Seemann, the Fire Company chief The fire chief that strips Barnabas' father of his fireman diploma after Barnabas' family falls into shame from Amalia's rude treatment of Sortini's Messenger.
Major themes
Theological
It is well documented that Brod's original construction was based on religious themes and this was furthered by the Muirs in their translations. But it has not ended with the Critical Editions. Numerous interpretations have been made with a variety of theological angles.
One interpretation of K.'s struggle to contact the castle is that it represents a man's search for salvation. According to Mark Harman, translator of a recent edition of The Castle, this was the interpretation favored by the original translators Willa and Edwin Muir, who produced the first English volume in 1925. Harman feels he has removed the bias in the translations toward this view, but many still feel this is the point of the book.
Fueling the biblical interpretations of the novel are the various names and situations. For example, the official Galater (the German word for Galatians), one of the initial regions to develop a strong Christian following from the work of Apostle Paul and his assistant Barnabas. The name of the messenger, Barnabas, for the same reason. Even the Critical Editions naming of the beginning chapter, "Arrival", among other things liken K. to an Old Testament messiah.
Abuse of power
While in talking to Olga in (Chapter XVII, "Amalia's Secret") K. himself ridicules the officials, in general, based on Sortini's "abuse of power" in requesting Amalia to come to the Gentleman's Inn. K. caught, once again, in not understanding the customs of the village is shocked at the behavior of Sortini. Olga expresses the "heroic" actions of Amalia, but appears too understanding of the community's acceptance of the status quo when it comes to the solicitations by the officials.
Bureaucracy
The obvious thread throughout The Castle is bureaucracy. The extreme degree is nearly comical and the village residents' justifications of it are amazing. Hence it is no surprise that many feel that the work is a direct result of the political situation of the era in which it was written, which was shot through with anti-Semitism, remnants of the Habsburg bureaucracy, etc.
But even in these analyses, the veiled references to more sensitive issues are pointed out. For instance, the treatment of the Barnabas family, with their requirement to first prove guilt before they could request a pardon from it and the way their fellow villagers desert them have been pointed out as a direct reference to the anti-Semitic climate at the time.
Allusions to other works
Critics often talk of The Castle and The Trial in concert, highlighting the struggle of the protagonist against a bureaucratic system and standing before the law's door unable to enter as in the parable of the priest in The Trial.
In spite of motifs common with other works of Kafka, The Castle is quite different from The Trial. While K., the main hero of The Castle, faces similar uncertainty and difficulty in grasping the reality that suddenly surrounds him; Josef K., the protagonist of The Trial, seems to be more experienced and emotionally stronger. On the other hand, while Josef K.'s surroundings stay familiar even when strange events befall him, K. finds himself in a new world whose laws and rules are unfamiliar to him.
Publication history
Harman translation
In 1926 Max Brod persuaded Kurt Wolff Verlag to publish the first German edition of The Castle. Due to its unfinished nature and his desire to get Kafka's work published, Max Brod took some editorial freedom.
In 1961 Malcolm Pasley was able to gain control of the manuscript, along with most of the other Kafka writings (save The Trial) and had it placed in the Oxford's Bodleian library. There, Pasley headed a team of scholars and recompiled Kafka's works into the Critical Edition. The Castle Critical Edition, in German, consists of two volumes—the novel in one volume and the fragments, deletions and editor's notes in a second volume. They were published by S. Fischer Verlag in 1982, hence occasionally referred to as the "Fischer Editions".
Mark Harman used the first volume of this set to create the 1998 edition of The Castle, often refer to as based on the "Restored Text" or the "English Critical Edition".
The lack of the fragments and missing text would have little meaning to most readers if the Muir translation did not let one know that there was more to read. The casual reader may not find the additional text of value, which Harman mentions that he has not included the text. According to the Publisher's Note:
"We decided to omit the variants and passages deleted by Kafka that are included in Pasley's second volume, even though variants can indeed shed light on the genesis of literary texts. The chief objective of this new edition, which is intended for the general public, is to present the text in a form that is as close as possible to the state in which the author left the manuscript."
Harman has received general acceptance of his translation as being technically accurate and true to the original German. He has, though, received criticism for, at times not creating the prosaic form of Kafka. Some of this is due, as with Muir's translations, on accusations that Pasley compilations are also inaccurate, although better than Brod's.
As noted in the Table of Contents above, Harman includes an eleven page discussion on his philosophy behind the translation. This section provides significant information about the method he used and his thought process. There are numerous examples of passages from Pasley, Muir's translation and his translation to provide the reader with a better feel for the work. As referenced above, some feel that his (and the publisher's) praise for his work and his "patronizing" of the Muirs goes a little too far.
Muir translation
In 1930 Willa and Edwin Muir translated the First German edition of The Castle as it was compiled by Max Brod. It was published by Secker & Warburg in England and Alfred A. Knopf in the United States. 1941 edition was the edition that fed the Kafka post-war craze. The 1941 edition included a homage by Thomas Mann.
In 1954 the "Definitive" edition was published and included additional sections Brod had added to the Schocken Definitive German edition. The new sections were translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. Some edits were made in the Muir text namely the changes were "Town Council" to "Village Council", "Superintendent" to "Mayor", "Clients" to "Applicants" .
The 1994 edition, the current publication, contains a preface by Irving Howe.
The Muir translations make use of wording that is often considered "spiritual" in nature. In one notable example, the Muirs translate the description of the castle as "soaring unfalteringly" where Harman uses "tapered decisively". Furthermore, the word "illusory" is used from the opening paragraph forward. Some critics note this as further evidence of the bias in the translation leaning toward a mystical interpretation.
Underwood translation
A translation by J. A. Underwood was published in 1997 and 2000 (ISBN 0-14-018504-6) by Penguin in the UK.
Adaptations
The book was adapted by German director Rudolf Noelte into a film released in 1968. It was also filmed by Austrian director Michael Haneke in 1997 under the original German title Das Schloß, starring Ulrich Mühe as K. There is a 1994 Russian movie adaptation, The Castle, directed by Aleksei Balabanov. Another less-well-known adaptation was also made in Russia in 1994, called The Land Surveyor (Землемер). It was a 46-minute-long animation created at Diogen Studio and directed by Dmitriy Naumov and Valentin Telegin. . A 120-minute-long French radio adaptation, written by Stephane Michaka and directed by Cedric Aussir, was aired by France Culture in 2010.
Allusions to The Castle in other works
A story similar to that of The Castle is told in the British television series The Prisoner. In the late 1970s, an unlicensed computer game spin-off of The Prisoner took things one step further by incorporating elements of The Castle into the game play.
The novel Oficina Número 1 (Office Number 1) by Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva has one character reading The Castle, and although never referred to by name, describes several parts of it.
The Castle is also referred to in Lawrence Thornton's Imagining Argentina. A professor is arrested under suspicion of subversive activities. He tells the authorities he has been meeting Dostoevsky, Koestler and Camus at a place called "the Castle". The main character's cat is also named Kafka.
Although not expressly stated as such, the Steven Soderbergh film Kafka from 1991, starring Jeremy Irons, incorporates the basic thematic elements of The Castle as well as allusions to Kafka's own life as a writer and his collected works. The title character, "Kafka", an insurance company clerk by day and a writer by night, lives and works in the shadow of the mysterious Castle, which rules over the life and death of the local citizenry through a seemingly incomprehensibly complex conspiracy of bureaucracy and cover-ups.
Iain Banks's novel Walking on Glass has characters who find themselves in a situation similar to K.'s: trapped in a castle, subject to arbitrary and bizarre rules which they must obey in order to find a way of leaving, and surrounded by "servants" who comply entirely with the rules by which the castle is run. The allusion is made specific in one of the final chapters, where reading The Castle (along with The Trial and Titus Groan) is hinted at as a key to the characters' escape from their own castle.
K., the protagonist of J.M. Coetzee's The Life and Times of Michael K, attempts to live simply outside the governing system of war torn South Africa.[citation needed]
African-American author Richard Wright references The Castle in his autobiography Black Boy.
Japanese game designer Suda51, creator of No More Heroes, is planning to make a game based on The Castle, titled Kuriyami
A world in the children's Nintendo DS game Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, the Galactic Jungle, presents the player with a stubborn bureaucracy not unlike the one portrayed in the novel.
Gene Wolfe's novel There Are Doors contains numerous references to The Castle throughout, including a high-placed official known as Klamm, several characters referred to as "Herr K.," and an actual copy of Das Schloss found nailed to a table within a dream.
Argentinian writer Ernesto Sabato is said to be influenced by Kafka's existentialism. The main character in his novelle, "The Tunnel", is named Castel, presumably after Kafka's story title.
History of the novel
Kafka began writing The Castle on the evening of January 27, 1922, the day he arrived at the mountain resort of Spindlermühle (now in the Czech Republic). A picture taken of him upon his arrival shows him by a horse-drawn sleigh in the snow in a setting reminiscent of The Castle. Hence, the significance that the first few chapters of the handwritten manuscript were written in first person and at some point later changed by Kafka to a third person narrator, 'K.'
Max Brod
Kafka died prior to finishing The Castle and it is questionable whether Kafka intended on finishing it if he had survived his tuberculosis. On separate occasions he told his friend Max Brod of two different conditions: K., the book's protagonist, would continue to reside and die in the village; the castle notifying him on his death bed 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" , but then on September 11, 1922 in a letter to Max Brod, he said he was giving up on the book and would never return to it. As it is, the book ends mid-sentence.
Although Brod was instructed by Kafka to destroy all his works on his death, he did not and set about publishing Kafka's writings. The Castle was originally published in German in 1926 by the publisher Kurt Wolff Verlag of Munich. This edition sold far less than the 1500 copies that were printed. It was republished in 1935 by Schocken Verlag in Berlin, and in 1946 by Schocken Books of New York.
Brod had to heavily edit the work to ready it for publication. His goal was to gain acceptance of the work and the author, not to maintain the structure of Kafka's writing. This would play heavily in the future of the translations and continues to be the center of discussion on the text. Brod donated the manuscript to Oxford University.
Brod placed a strong religious significance to the symbolism of the castle. This is one possible interpretation of the work based on numerous Judeo-Christian references as noted by many including Arnold Heidsieck.
Malcolm Pasley
The publisher, Salmen Schocken, soon realized the translations were "bad" and in 1940 desired a "completely different approach". In 1961 Malcolm Pasley got access to all of Kafka's works, except The Trial, and deposited them in Oxford's Bodleian library. Pasley and a team of scholars (Gerhard Neumann, Malcolm Pasley, Jost Schillemeit, and Jürgen Born) started publishing the works in 1982 through S. Fischer Verlag. Das Schloß was published that year as a two volume set — the novel in the first volume, and the fragments, deletions and editor's notes in a second volume. This team restored the original German text to its full, and incomplete state, including the unique Kafka punctuation considered critical to the style.
Stroemfeld/Roter Stern
Interpretations of Kafka's intent for the manuscript are ongoing. Stroemfeld/Roter Stern Verlag is working for the rights to publish another critical edition with manuscript and transcription side-by-side. But they have met with resistance from the Kafka heirs and Pasley. This edition is not yet available.
Major editions
* 1930 Translators: Willa and Edwin Muir. Based on the First German edition, by Max Brod. Published By Secker & Warburg in England and Alfred A. Knopf in the United States.
* 1941 Translators: Willa and Edwin Muir. Edition include an Homage by Thomas Mann.
* 1954 Translators: Willa and Edwin Muir additional sections translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. "Definitive edition". Based on the Schocken 1951 Definitive edition .
* 1994 Translators: Muir, et al. Preface by Irving Howe.
* 1997 Translator: J. A. Underwood, Introduction: Idris Parry. Based on Pasley Critical German Text.
* 1998 Translator: Mark Harman Based on Pasley Critical German Text.
The title
The title, Das Schloß, may be translated as "the castle" or "the lock". It is also similar to Der Schluß (close or end). The castle is locked and closed to K and the townspeople; neither can gain access.
Plot
The narrator, K. arrives in the village, governed by the castle. When seeking shelter at the town inn, he gives himself out to be a land surveyor summoned by the castle authorities. He is quickly notified that his castle contact is an official named Klamm, who, in the introductory note, informs K. he will report to the Council Chairman.
The Council Chairman informs K. that, through a mix up in communication between the castle and the village, he was erroneously requested but, trying to accommodate K., the Council Chairman offers him a position in the service of the school teacher as a janitor. Meanwhile, K., unfamiliar with the customs, bureaucracy and processes of the village, continues to attempt to reach the official Klamm, who is not accessible.
The villagers hold the officials and the castle in the highest regard, justifying, quite elaborately at times, the actions of the officials, even though they do not appear to know what officials do or why they do it; they simply defend it. The number of assumptions and justifications about the functions of the officials and their dealings are enumerated through lengthy monologues of the villagers. Everyone appears to have an explanation for the official's actions that appear to be founded on assumptions and gossip. One of the more obvious contradictions between the "official word" and the village conception is the dissertation by the secretary Erlanger on Frieda's required return to service as a barmaid. K. is the only villager that knows that the request is being forced by the castle (even though Frieda may be the genesis), with no regard for anyone in the village, only Klamm. Pepi and Jeremiah quickly come to their conclusions and do not hesitate to state them.
The castle is the ultimate bureaucracy with copious paperwork that the bureaucracy maintains is "flawless". This flawlessness is of course a lie; it is a flaw in the paperwork that has brought K. to the village. There are other failures of the system which are occasionally referred to. K. witnesses a flagrant misprocessing after his nighttime interrogation by Erlanger as a servant destroys paperwork when he cannot determine who the recipient should be.
The castle's occupants appear to be all adult men and there is little reference to the castle other than to its bureaucratic functions. The two notable instances are the reference to a fire brigade and that Otto Brunswick's wife is self declared as from the castle. The latter builds the importance of Hans (Otto's son) in K's eyes, as a way to gain access to the castle officials.
The functions of the officials are never mentioned. The officials that are discussed have one or more secretaries that do their work in their village. Although the officials come to the village they do not interact with the villagers unless they need female companionship, implied to be sexual.
Characters
Note: The Muir translations refer to the Herrenhof Inn where the Harman translations translate this to the Gentleman's Inn. Below all references to the inn where the officials stay in the village is the Herrenhof Inn since this was the first, and potentially more widely read, translation.
Character Description
K., the Land-Surveyor The protagonist of the story, recognized as a land surveyor, employed as the school janitor, and a stranger to the townspeople. He spends most of the novel trying to overcome the bureaucracy of the village and to contact the castle official Klamm.
Frieda A former barmaid at the Herrenhof, who is K.'s fiancée for most of the novel. She often finds herself torn between her duty to K. and her fears regarding his over-zealousness. She eventually leaves K. and ends up in the arms of his former assistant, Jeremiah (who has since become a waitperson at the Herrenhof).
Hans, landlord
(Bridge Inn) Nephew of the original owner of the inn. According to his wife, Gardena, he is lazy and overly nice to K.
Gardena, landlady
(Bridge Inn) The self proclaimed firebrand of the Bridge Inn she is a former short-term mistress to Klamm and very distrustful of K.'s motives. She remains infatuated with Klamm.
Barnabas, a messenger A messenger of the castle assigned to K. He is new to the service. K. is instructed to use him to communicate with the official Klamm. He is very immature and sensitive.
Arthur and Jeremiah, K's assistants
(Artur and Jeremias in Harman edition) Shortly after his arrival in the village, K. is given two assistants to help him with his various needs. They are a continual source of frustration for him, however, and he eventually drives them from his service through his brutal treatment. They have been assigned to K., to make him happy, by the official Galater who was deputizing for Klamm at the time.
Mayor/Superintendent
(Village Council Chairman in Harman edition) Assigned by Klamm to give K. his assignment and hence is his superior. He explains to K why he is not needed as a land surveyor. He offers K. the job of school janitor to the dismay of the Teacher.
Mizzi, the mayor's wife The wife and assistant of the Mayor, Gardena refers to her as the one who does the work.
Klamm An elusive castle official who is K.'s Castle Authority. Like the other Castle officials in the book, his actual area of expertise is never mentioned. K. spends a large portion of the novel trying to secure a meeting with Klamm. K., it seems, fixes many of his hopes for a successful resolution to his problems upon this meeting with Klamm. He has at least two secretaries—Erlanger (First Secretary) and Momus.
In Czech (and Kafka was able to speak and read/write Czech) "klam" means "illusion."
Momus, Klamm's secretary Handles all written work for and receives all petitions to Klamm. He is also secretary for Vallabne, who is not mentioned again in the novel.
Erlanger, Klamm's secretary The First Secretary of Klamm who is sent to "interrogate" K, but only gives him a short message.
Olga, Barnabas' sister The older sister of Amalia and Barnabas. She helps K. on his quest, partly by telling him the story of why her family is considered outcasts and by teaching him some of the village customs.
Amalia, Barnabas' sister Younger sister of Barnabas and Olga. She was disgraced in the village after rudely turning down a summons from the castle official Sortini for sexual favors.
Barnabas' Father The father of Olga, Amalia and Barnabas. Past village cobbler and notable fireman. After Amalia's disgraceful interactions with Sortini's messenger, his business is ruined and he is stripped of his fire credentials
Barnabas' Mother The mother of Olga, Amalia and Barnabas.
Otto Brunswick, son-in-law of Lasemann
(brother-in-law of Lasemann in Harman edition) Hans Brunswick's father. Opportunistically takes over Barnabas' father's customers as the Barnabas family falls into disrepute from Amalia's rude treatment of Sortini's Messenger. According to the Mayor, Brunswick was the only person in the village that desired that a land surveyor be hired. No reason for this is given.
Frau Brunswick Hans Brunswick's Mother. She refers to herself as "from the castle" and is the only reference to a female at the castle.
Hans, a sympathetic Student A student at the school where K is a janitor. Offers to help K and K uses him to attempt to find ways to get to the castle through his mother.
Herrenhof Landlord Landlord of the Herrenhof Inn.
Herrenhof Landlady Well dressed landlady at the Herrenhof Inn. Seems to be the matriarch of the Inn (as is Gardena at the Bridge Inn). Is distrustful of K.
Galater He is the castle official that assigned the assistants to K. He was also "rescued" by Barnabas' father in a minor fire at the Herrenhof Inn.
Brügel
(Bürgel in Harman edition) A Secretary of a castle official, Friedrich. Friedrich is not mentioned again in the book, but in deleted text is referred to as an official who is falling out of favor. Brügel is a long winded secretary who muses about Castle interrogations with K, when the latter errantly enters his room at the Herrenhof Inn.
Sordini Castle secretary who exhaustively manages any transactions at the castle for his department and is suspicious of any potential error.
Sortini Castle official associated with the village fire brigade who solicits Amalia with a sexually explicit and rude request to come to his room at the Herrenhof.
Teacher When K. becomes the janitor at the school, the teacher becomes K.'s de facto superior. He does not approve of K. working at the school, but does not appear to have the authority to terminate K's appointment.
Miss Gisa, the school mistress The assistant school teacher who is courted by Schwarzer and also dislikes K.
Schwarzer An under-castellan's son who appears to have given up living in the castle to court Miss Gisa and become her student teacher.
Pepi A former chamber maid who is promoted to Frieda's barmaid position when the latter leaves her position at the Herrenhoff to live with K. She was a chambermaid with Emilie and Hennriette
Lasemann, a tanner, father-in-law of Otto Brunswick
(brother-in-law of Otto Brunswick in Harman edition) The village tanner that offers a few hours shelter to K. during on his first full day in the village.
Gerstacker, a Coachman Initially suspicious of K. but gives him a free sleigh back to the Bridge Inn after refusing to provide a ride to the castle. At the end of the book attempts to befriend K. since he believes K. has clout with Erlanger.
Seemann, the Fire Company chief The fire chief that strips Barnabas' father of his fireman diploma after Barnabas' family falls into shame from Amalia's rude treatment of Sortini's Messenger.
Major themes
Theological
It is well documented that Brod's original construction was based on religious themes and this was furthered by the Muirs in their translations. But it has not ended with the Critical Editions. Numerous interpretations have been made with a variety of theological angles.
One interpretation of K.'s struggle to contact the castle is that it represents a man's search for salvation. According to Mark Harman, translator of a recent edition of The Castle, this was the interpretation favored by the original translators Willa and Edwin Muir, who produced the first English volume in 1925. Harman feels he has removed the bias in the translations toward this view, but many still feel this is the point of the book.
Fueling the biblical interpretations of the novel are the various names and situations. For example, the official Galater (the German word for Galatians), one of the initial regions to develop a strong Christian following from the work of Apostle Paul and his assistant Barnabas. The name of the messenger, Barnabas, for the same reason. Even the Critical Editions naming of the beginning chapter, "Arrival", among other things liken K. to an Old Testament messiah.
Abuse of power
While in talking to Olga in (Chapter XVII, "Amalia's Secret") K. himself ridicules the officials, in general, based on Sortini's "abuse of power" in requesting Amalia to come to the Gentleman's Inn. K. caught, once again, in not understanding the customs of the village is shocked at the behavior of Sortini. Olga expresses the "heroic" actions of Amalia, but appears too understanding of the community's acceptance of the status quo when it comes to the solicitations by the officials.
Bureaucracy
The obvious thread throughout The Castle is bureaucracy. The extreme degree is nearly comical and the village residents' justifications of it are amazing. Hence it is no surprise that many feel that the work is a direct result of the political situation of the era in which it was written, which was shot through with anti-Semitism, remnants of the Habsburg bureaucracy, etc.
But even in these analyses, the veiled references to more sensitive issues are pointed out. For instance, the treatment of the Barnabas family, with their requirement to first prove guilt before they could request a pardon from it and the way their fellow villagers desert them have been pointed out as a direct reference to the anti-Semitic climate at the time.
Allusions to other works
Critics often talk of The Castle and The Trial in concert, highlighting the struggle of the protagonist against a bureaucratic system and standing before the law's door unable to enter as in the parable of the priest in The Trial.
In spite of motifs common with other works of Kafka, The Castle is quite different from The Trial. While K., the main hero of The Castle, faces similar uncertainty and difficulty in grasping the reality that suddenly surrounds him; Josef K., the protagonist of The Trial, seems to be more experienced and emotionally stronger. On the other hand, while Josef K.'s surroundings stay familiar even when strange events befall him, K. finds himself in a new world whose laws and rules are unfamiliar to him.
Publication history
Harman translation
In 1926 Max Brod persuaded Kurt Wolff Verlag to publish the first German edition of The Castle. Due to its unfinished nature and his desire to get Kafka's work published, Max Brod took some editorial freedom.
In 1961 Malcolm Pasley was able to gain control of the manuscript, along with most of the other Kafka writings (save The Trial) and had it placed in the Oxford's Bodleian library. There, Pasley headed a team of scholars and recompiled Kafka's works into the Critical Edition. The Castle Critical Edition, in German, consists of two volumes—the novel in one volume and the fragments, deletions and editor's notes in a second volume. They were published by S. Fischer Verlag in 1982, hence occasionally referred to as the "Fischer Editions".
Mark Harman used the first volume of this set to create the 1998 edition of The Castle, often refer to as based on the "Restored Text" or the "English Critical Edition".
The lack of the fragments and missing text would have little meaning to most readers if the Muir translation did not let one know that there was more to read. The casual reader may not find the additional text of value, which Harman mentions that he has not included the text. According to the Publisher's Note:
"We decided to omit the variants and passages deleted by Kafka that are included in Pasley's second volume, even though variants can indeed shed light on the genesis of literary texts. The chief objective of this new edition, which is intended for the general public, is to present the text in a form that is as close as possible to the state in which the author left the manuscript."
Harman has received general acceptance of his translation as being technically accurate and true to the original German. He has, though, received criticism for, at times not creating the prosaic form of Kafka. Some of this is due, as with Muir's translations, on accusations that Pasley compilations are also inaccurate, although better than Brod's.
As noted in the Table of Contents above, Harman includes an eleven page discussion on his philosophy behind the translation. This section provides significant information about the method he used and his thought process. There are numerous examples of passages from Pasley, Muir's translation and his translation to provide the reader with a better feel for the work. As referenced above, some feel that his (and the publisher's) praise for his work and his "patronizing" of the Muirs goes a little too far.
Muir translation
In 1930 Willa and Edwin Muir translated the First German edition of The Castle as it was compiled by Max Brod. It was published by Secker & Warburg in England and Alfred A. Knopf in the United States. 1941 edition was the edition that fed the Kafka post-war craze. The 1941 edition included a homage by Thomas Mann.
In 1954 the "Definitive" edition was published and included additional sections Brod had added to the Schocken Definitive German edition. The new sections were translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. Some edits were made in the Muir text namely the changes were "Town Council" to "Village Council", "Superintendent" to "Mayor", "Clients" to "Applicants" .
The 1994 edition, the current publication, contains a preface by Irving Howe.
The Muir translations make use of wording that is often considered "spiritual" in nature. In one notable example, the Muirs translate the description of the castle as "soaring unfalteringly" where Harman uses "tapered decisively". Furthermore, the word "illusory" is used from the opening paragraph forward. Some critics note this as further evidence of the bias in the translation leaning toward a mystical interpretation.
Underwood translation
A translation by J. A. Underwood was published in 1997 and 2000 (ISBN 0-14-018504-6) by Penguin in the UK.
Adaptations
The book was adapted by German director Rudolf Noelte into a film released in 1968. It was also filmed by Austrian director Michael Haneke in 1997 under the original German title Das Schloß, starring Ulrich Mühe as K. There is a 1994 Russian movie adaptation, The Castle, directed by Aleksei Balabanov. Another less-well-known adaptation was also made in Russia in 1994, called The Land Surveyor (Землемер). It was a 46-minute-long animation created at Diogen Studio and directed by Dmitriy Naumov and Valentin Telegin. . A 120-minute-long French radio adaptation, written by Stephane Michaka and directed by Cedric Aussir, was aired by France Culture in 2010.
Allusions to The Castle in other works
A story similar to that of The Castle is told in the British television series The Prisoner. In the late 1970s, an unlicensed computer game spin-off of The Prisoner took things one step further by incorporating elements of The Castle into the game play.
The novel Oficina Número 1 (Office Number 1) by Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva has one character reading The Castle, and although never referred to by name, describes several parts of it.
The Castle is also referred to in Lawrence Thornton's Imagining Argentina. A professor is arrested under suspicion of subversive activities. He tells the authorities he has been meeting Dostoevsky, Koestler and Camus at a place called "the Castle". The main character's cat is also named Kafka.
Although not expressly stated as such, the Steven Soderbergh film Kafka from 1991, starring Jeremy Irons, incorporates the basic thematic elements of The Castle as well as allusions to Kafka's own life as a writer and his collected works. The title character, "Kafka", an insurance company clerk by day and a writer by night, lives and works in the shadow of the mysterious Castle, which rules over the life and death of the local citizenry through a seemingly incomprehensibly complex conspiracy of bureaucracy and cover-ups.
Iain Banks's novel Walking on Glass has characters who find themselves in a situation similar to K.'s: trapped in a castle, subject to arbitrary and bizarre rules which they must obey in order to find a way of leaving, and surrounded by "servants" who comply entirely with the rules by which the castle is run. The allusion is made specific in one of the final chapters, where reading The Castle (along with The Trial and Titus Groan) is hinted at as a key to the characters' escape from their own castle.
K., the protagonist of J.M. Coetzee's The Life and Times of Michael K, attempts to live simply outside the governing system of war torn South Africa.[citation needed]
African-American author Richard Wright references The Castle in his autobiography Black Boy.
Japanese game designer Suda51, creator of No More Heroes, is planning to make a game based on The Castle, titled Kuriyami
A world in the children's Nintendo DS game Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, the Galactic Jungle, presents the player with a stubborn bureaucracy not unlike the one portrayed in the novel.
Gene Wolfe's novel There Are Doors contains numerous references to The Castle throughout, including a high-placed official known as Klamm, several characters referred to as "Herr K.," and an actual copy of Das Schloss found nailed to a table within a dream.
Argentinian writer Ernesto Sabato is said to be influenced by Kafka's existentialism. The main character in his novelle, "The Tunnel", is named Castel, presumably after Kafka's story title.
The Trial (German: Der Prozess) is a novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1925. One of Kafka's best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime never revealed either to him or the reader.
Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never completed, although it does include a chapter which brings the story to an end. After his death in 1924, Kafka's friend and literary executor Max Brod edited the text for publication.
The Trial was filmed and released in 1962 by director Orson Welles, starring Anthony Perkins (as Josef K.) and Romy Schneider. A more recent remake was released in 1993 and featured Kyle MacLachlan in the star role. In 1999, it was adapted for comics by Italian artist Guido Crepax.
Plot summary
(As the novel was never completed, certain inconsistencies exist within the novel, such as disparities in timing in addition to other flaws in narration.)
On his thirtieth birthday, a senior bank clerk, Josef K., who lives in lodgings, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents for an unspecified crime. The agents do not name the authority for which they are acting. He is not taken away, however, but left at home to await instructions from the Committee of Affairs.
K. goes to visit the magistrate, but instead is forced to have a meeting with an attendant's wife. Looking at the Magistrate's books, he discovers a cache of pornography.
K. returns home to find Fräulein Montag, a lodger from another room, moving in with Fräulein Bürstner. He suspects that this is to prevent him from pursuing his affair with the latter woman. Yet another lodger, Captain Lanz, appears to be in league with Montag.
Later, in a store room at his own bank, K. discovers the two agents who arrested him being whipped by a flogger for asking K. for bribes, as a result of complaints K. previously made about them to the Magistrate. K. tries to argue with the flogger, saying that the men need not be whipped, but the flogger cannot be swayed. The next day he returns to the store room and is shocked to find everything as he had found it the day before, including the Whipper and the two agents.
K. is visited by his uncle, who is a friend of a lawyer. The lawyer was with the Clerk of the Court. The uncle seems distressed by K.'s predicament. At first sympathetic, he becomes concerned K. is underestimating the seriousness of the case. The uncle introduces K. to an advocate, who is attended by Leni, a nurse, who K.'s uncle suspects is the advocate's mistress. K. has a sexual encounter with Leni, whilst his uncle is talking with the Advocate and the Chief Clerk of the Court, much to his uncle's anger, and to the detriment of his case.
K. visits the advocate and finds him to be a capricious and unhelpful character. K. returns to his bank but finds that his colleagues are trying to undermine him.
K. is advised by one of his bank clients to visit Titorelli, a court painter, for advice. Titorelli has no official connections, yet seems to have a deep understanding of the process. K. learns that, to Titorelli's knowledge, not a single defendant has ever been acquitted. He sets out what K.'s options are, but the consequences of all of them are unpleasant: they consist of different delay tactics to stretch out his case as long as possible before the inevitable "Guilty" verdict. Titorelli instructs K. that there's not much he can do since he doesn't know of what crime he has been accused.
K. decides to take control of his own life and visits his advocate with the intention of dismissing him. At the advocate's office he meets a downtrodden individual, Block, a client who offers K. some insight from a client's perspective. Block's case has continued for five years and he appears to have been virtually enslaved by his dependence on the advocate's meaningless and circular advice. The advocate mocks Block in front of K. for his dog-like subservience. This experience further poisons K.'s opinion of his advocate, and K is bemused as to why his advocate would think that seeing such a client, in such a state, could change his mind. (This chapter was left unfinished by the author.)
K. is asked to tour an Italian client around local places of cultural interest, but the Italian client short of time asks K. to tour him around only the cathedral, setting a time to meet there. When the client doesn't show up, K. explores the cathedral which is empty except for an old woman and a church official. K. decides to leave as a priest K. notices seems to be preparing to give a sermon from a small second pulpit, lest it begin and K. be compelled to stay for its entirety. Instead of giving a sermon, the priest calls out K.'s name, although K. has never known the priest. The priest works for the court, and tells K. a fable, (which has been published separately as Before the Law) that is meant to explain his situation, but instead causes confusion, and implies that K.'s fate is hopeless. Before the Law begins as a parable, then continues with several pages of interpretation between the Priest and K. The gravity of the priest's words prepares the reader for an unpleasant ending.
On the last day of K.'s thirtieth year, two men arrive to execute him. He offers little resistance, suggesting that he has realised this as being inevitable for some time. They lead him to a quarry where he is expected to kill himself, but he cannot. The two men then execute him. His last words describe his own death: "Like a dog!"
Characters
Others
Fräulein Bürstner - A boarder in the same house as Josef K. She lets him kiss her one night, but then rebuffs his advances. She makes a brief reappearance in the novel's final pages.
Fräulein Montag - Friend of Fräulein Bürstner, she talks to K. about ending his relationship with Fräulein Bürstner after his arrest. She claims she can bring him insight, because she is an objective third party.
Frau Grubach - The proprietress of the lodging house in which K. lives. She holds K. in high esteem, despite his arrest.
Uncle Karl - K.'s impetuous uncle from the country, formerly his guardian. Upon learning about the trial, Karl insists that K. hire Herr Huld, the lawyer.
Herr Huld, the Lawyer - K.'s pompous and pretentious advocate who provides precious little in the way of action and far too much in the way of anecdote.
Leni - Herr Huld's nurse, she has feelings for Josef K. and soon becomes his lover. She shows him her webbed hand, yet another reference to the motif of the hand throughout the book. Apparently, she finds accused men extremely attractive—the fact of their indictment makes them irresistible to her.
Vice-President - K.'s unctuous rival at the Bank, only too willing to catch K. in a compromising situation. He repeatedly takes advantage of K.'s preoccupation with the trial to advance his own ambitions.
President - Manager of the Bank. A sickly figure, whose position the Vice-President is trying to assume. Gets on well with K., inviting him to various engagements.
Rudi Block, the Merchant - Block is another accused man and client of Huld. His case is five years old, and he is but a shadow of the prosperous grain dealer he once was. All his time, energy, and resources are now devoted to his case, to the point of detriment to his own life. Although he has hired five additional lawyers on the side, he is completely and pathetically subservient to Huld.
Titorelli, the Painter - Titorelli inherited the position of Court Painter from his father. He knows a great deal about the comings and goings of the Court's lowest level. He offers to help K., and manages to unload a few identical landscape paintings on the accused man.
Style
Parable
(Taken directly from Novels for Students: The Trial.)
Kafka intentionally set out to write parables, not just novels, about the human condition. The Trial is a parable that includes the smaller parable Before the Law. There is clearly a relationship between the two but the exact meaning of either parable is left up to the individual reader. K. and the Priest discuss the many possible readings. Both the short parable and their discussion seem to indicate that the reader is much like the man at the gate; there is a meaning in the story for everyone just as there is one gate to the Law for each person.
The parable within Kafka's masterpiece highlights perfectly the essence of his philosophy. Assigned unique roles in life, individuals must search deep within the apparent absurdity of existence to achieve spiritual self-realisation. The old man, therefore, is the symbol of this universal search inherent to mankind. 'The Trial' is not simply a novel about the potential disaster of over-bureaucratisation in society; it is an exploration of the personal and, particularly, spiritual, needs of human beings.
Legality
In a recent study based on Kafka’s office writings, Reza Banakar points out that many of Kafka’s descriptions of law and legality are often treated as metaphors for things other than law, but also are worthy of examination as a particular concept of law and legality which operates paradoxically as an integral part of the human condition under modernity. Joseph K. and his inexplicable experience of the law in The Trial were, for example, born out of an actual legal case in which Kafka was involved.
Film portrayals
* In the 1962 Orson Welles movie adaptation of The Trial, Josef K. is played by Anthony Perkins. Kyle MacLachlan portrays him in the 1993 version.
* Martin Scorsese's 1985 film After Hours is a re-imagining of the Trial.
Theatre adaptions
* The writer and director Steven Berkoff adapted several of Kafka's novels into plays and directed them for stage. His version of The Trial was first performed in 1970 in London and published in 1981.
Selected publication history
* Oxford World's Classics, 4 October 2009, Translation: Mike Mitchell, ISBN 9780199238293
* Dover Thrift Editions, 22 July 2009, Translation: David Wyllie, ISBN 9780486470610
* Penguin Modern Classics, 29 June 2000, Translation: Idris Parry, ISBN 9780141182902
* Schocken Books, 25 May 1999, Translation: Breon Mitchell, ISBN 9780805209990
* Everyman's Library, 30 June 1992, Translation: Willa and Edwin Muir, ISBN 9780679409946
Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never completed, although it does include a chapter which brings the story to an end. After his death in 1924, Kafka's friend and literary executor Max Brod edited the text for publication.
The Trial was filmed and released in 1962 by director Orson Welles, starring Anthony Perkins (as Josef K.) and Romy Schneider. A more recent remake was released in 1993 and featured Kyle MacLachlan in the star role. In 1999, it was adapted for comics by Italian artist Guido Crepax.
Plot summary
(As the novel was never completed, certain inconsistencies exist within the novel, such as disparities in timing in addition to other flaws in narration.)
On his thirtieth birthday, a senior bank clerk, Josef K., who lives in lodgings, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents for an unspecified crime. The agents do not name the authority for which they are acting. He is not taken away, however, but left at home to await instructions from the Committee of Affairs.
K. goes to visit the magistrate, but instead is forced to have a meeting with an attendant's wife. Looking at the Magistrate's books, he discovers a cache of pornography.
K. returns home to find Fräulein Montag, a lodger from another room, moving in with Fräulein Bürstner. He suspects that this is to prevent him from pursuing his affair with the latter woman. Yet another lodger, Captain Lanz, appears to be in league with Montag.
Later, in a store room at his own bank, K. discovers the two agents who arrested him being whipped by a flogger for asking K. for bribes, as a result of complaints K. previously made about them to the Magistrate. K. tries to argue with the flogger, saying that the men need not be whipped, but the flogger cannot be swayed. The next day he returns to the store room and is shocked to find everything as he had found it the day before, including the Whipper and the two agents.
K. is visited by his uncle, who is a friend of a lawyer. The lawyer was with the Clerk of the Court. The uncle seems distressed by K.'s predicament. At first sympathetic, he becomes concerned K. is underestimating the seriousness of the case. The uncle introduces K. to an advocate, who is attended by Leni, a nurse, who K.'s uncle suspects is the advocate's mistress. K. has a sexual encounter with Leni, whilst his uncle is talking with the Advocate and the Chief Clerk of the Court, much to his uncle's anger, and to the detriment of his case.
K. visits the advocate and finds him to be a capricious and unhelpful character. K. returns to his bank but finds that his colleagues are trying to undermine him.
K. is advised by one of his bank clients to visit Titorelli, a court painter, for advice. Titorelli has no official connections, yet seems to have a deep understanding of the process. K. learns that, to Titorelli's knowledge, not a single defendant has ever been acquitted. He sets out what K.'s options are, but the consequences of all of them are unpleasant: they consist of different delay tactics to stretch out his case as long as possible before the inevitable "Guilty" verdict. Titorelli instructs K. that there's not much he can do since he doesn't know of what crime he has been accused.
K. decides to take control of his own life and visits his advocate with the intention of dismissing him. At the advocate's office he meets a downtrodden individual, Block, a client who offers K. some insight from a client's perspective. Block's case has continued for five years and he appears to have been virtually enslaved by his dependence on the advocate's meaningless and circular advice. The advocate mocks Block in front of K. for his dog-like subservience. This experience further poisons K.'s opinion of his advocate, and K is bemused as to why his advocate would think that seeing such a client, in such a state, could change his mind. (This chapter was left unfinished by the author.)
K. is asked to tour an Italian client around local places of cultural interest, but the Italian client short of time asks K. to tour him around only the cathedral, setting a time to meet there. When the client doesn't show up, K. explores the cathedral which is empty except for an old woman and a church official. K. decides to leave as a priest K. notices seems to be preparing to give a sermon from a small second pulpit, lest it begin and K. be compelled to stay for its entirety. Instead of giving a sermon, the priest calls out K.'s name, although K. has never known the priest. The priest works for the court, and tells K. a fable, (which has been published separately as Before the Law) that is meant to explain his situation, but instead causes confusion, and implies that K.'s fate is hopeless. Before the Law begins as a parable, then continues with several pages of interpretation between the Priest and K. The gravity of the priest's words prepares the reader for an unpleasant ending.
On the last day of K.'s thirtieth year, two men arrive to execute him. He offers little resistance, suggesting that he has realised this as being inevitable for some time. They lead him to a quarry where he is expected to kill himself, but he cannot. The two men then execute him. His last words describe his own death: "Like a dog!"
Characters
Others
Fräulein Bürstner - A boarder in the same house as Josef K. She lets him kiss her one night, but then rebuffs his advances. She makes a brief reappearance in the novel's final pages.
Fräulein Montag - Friend of Fräulein Bürstner, she talks to K. about ending his relationship with Fräulein Bürstner after his arrest. She claims she can bring him insight, because she is an objective third party.
Frau Grubach - The proprietress of the lodging house in which K. lives. She holds K. in high esteem, despite his arrest.
Uncle Karl - K.'s impetuous uncle from the country, formerly his guardian. Upon learning about the trial, Karl insists that K. hire Herr Huld, the lawyer.
Herr Huld, the Lawyer - K.'s pompous and pretentious advocate who provides precious little in the way of action and far too much in the way of anecdote.
Leni - Herr Huld's nurse, she has feelings for Josef K. and soon becomes his lover. She shows him her webbed hand, yet another reference to the motif of the hand throughout the book. Apparently, she finds accused men extremely attractive—the fact of their indictment makes them irresistible to her.
Vice-President - K.'s unctuous rival at the Bank, only too willing to catch K. in a compromising situation. He repeatedly takes advantage of K.'s preoccupation with the trial to advance his own ambitions.
President - Manager of the Bank. A sickly figure, whose position the Vice-President is trying to assume. Gets on well with K., inviting him to various engagements.
Rudi Block, the Merchant - Block is another accused man and client of Huld. His case is five years old, and he is but a shadow of the prosperous grain dealer he once was. All his time, energy, and resources are now devoted to his case, to the point of detriment to his own life. Although he has hired five additional lawyers on the side, he is completely and pathetically subservient to Huld.
Titorelli, the Painter - Titorelli inherited the position of Court Painter from his father. He knows a great deal about the comings and goings of the Court's lowest level. He offers to help K., and manages to unload a few identical landscape paintings on the accused man.
Style
Parable
(Taken directly from Novels for Students: The Trial.)
Kafka intentionally set out to write parables, not just novels, about the human condition. The Trial is a parable that includes the smaller parable Before the Law. There is clearly a relationship between the two but the exact meaning of either parable is left up to the individual reader. K. and the Priest discuss the many possible readings. Both the short parable and their discussion seem to indicate that the reader is much like the man at the gate; there is a meaning in the story for everyone just as there is one gate to the Law for each person.
The parable within Kafka's masterpiece highlights perfectly the essence of his philosophy. Assigned unique roles in life, individuals must search deep within the apparent absurdity of existence to achieve spiritual self-realisation. The old man, therefore, is the symbol of this universal search inherent to mankind. 'The Trial' is not simply a novel about the potential disaster of over-bureaucratisation in society; it is an exploration of the personal and, particularly, spiritual, needs of human beings.
Legality
In a recent study based on Kafka’s office writings, Reza Banakar points out that many of Kafka’s descriptions of law and legality are often treated as metaphors for things other than law, but also are worthy of examination as a particular concept of law and legality which operates paradoxically as an integral part of the human condition under modernity. Joseph K. and his inexplicable experience of the law in The Trial were, for example, born out of an actual legal case in which Kafka was involved.
Film portrayals
* In the 1962 Orson Welles movie adaptation of The Trial, Josef K. is played by Anthony Perkins. Kyle MacLachlan portrays him in the 1993 version.
* Martin Scorsese's 1985 film After Hours is a re-imagining of the Trial.
Theatre adaptions
* The writer and director Steven Berkoff adapted several of Kafka's novels into plays and directed them for stage. His version of The Trial was first performed in 1970 in London and published in 1981.
Selected publication history
* Oxford World's Classics, 4 October 2009, Translation: Mike Mitchell, ISBN 9780199238293
* Dover Thrift Editions, 22 July 2009, Translation: David Wyllie, ISBN 9780486470610
* Penguin Modern Classics, 29 June 2000, Translation: Idris Parry, ISBN 9780141182902
* Schocken Books, 25 May 1999, Translation: Breon Mitchell, ISBN 9780805209990
* Everyman's Library, 30 June 1992, Translation: Willa and Edwin Muir, ISBN 9780679409946
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), by Milan Kundera, is a philosophical novel about a man and two women and their lives in the Prague Spring of the Czechoslovak Communist period in 1968. Although written in 1982, the novel was not published until two years later in France. The Czech: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí and French: l'Insoutenable légèreté d'être titles are more common worldwide.
Synopsis
The Unbearable Lightness of Being takes place in Prague in 1968. It explores the artistic and intellectual life of Czech society during the Communist period, from the Prague Spring to the Soviet Union’s August 1968 invasion and its aftermath. The characters are Tomáš, a successful surgeon; his wife Tereza, a photographer anguished by her husband's infidelities; Tomáš’s lover Sabina, a free-spirited artist; and the secondary characters Franz, the Swiss university professor and lover of Sabina; and Simon, Tomáš’s estranged son from an earlier marriage.
Challenging Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence (the universe and its events have already occurred and will recur ad infinitum), the story’s thematic meditations posit the alternative that each person has only one life to live, and that which occurs in that life, occurs only once and shall never occur again — thus the “lightness” of being; whereas eternal recurrence imposes a “heaviness” on our lives and on the decisions we make (it gives them weight, to borrow from Nietzsche's metaphor), a heaviness that Nietzsche thought could be either a tremendous burden or great benefit depending on one's perspective.
The German expression Einmal ist keinmal encapsulates “lightness” so: “what happens but once, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all”; if concluded logically, life ultimately is insignificant. Hence, because decisions do not matter, they are rendered light, because they do not cause personal suffering. Yet, simultaneously, the insignificance of decisions — our being — causes us great suffering, perceived as the unbearable lightness of being consequent to one’s awareness of life occurring once and never again; thus no one person’s actions are universally significant. This insignificance is existentially unbearable when it is considered that people want their lives to have transcendent meaning. As literary art, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is considered a modernist humanist novel and a post-modern novel of high narrative craft.[citation needed]
Publication
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) was not published in the original Czech until 1985, as Czech: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí, by the exile publishing house 68 Publishers (Toronto, Canada). The second Czech edition was published in October 2006, in Brno (Czech Republic), some eighteen years after the Velvet Revolution, because Kundera did not approve it earlier. The first English translation by Michael Henry Heim was published in hardback in 1984 by Harper & Row in the US and Faber and Faber in the UK and in paperback in 1985. The US paperback was reprinted in New York City by Perennial in 1999 with ISBN 0-06-093213-9.
Characters
* Tomáš - The story's protagonist: a Czech surgeon and intellectual. Tomáš is a light-hearted womanizer who lives for his work. He considers sex and love to be distinct entities: he copulates with many women but loves only his wife, Tereza. He sees no contradiction between these two activities. He explains womanizing as an imperative to explore the idiosyncrasies of people (women, in this case) only expressed during sex. At first he views his wife as a burden he is obligated to take care of, but this changes when he abandons his twin obsessions of work and womanizing and moves to the country with Tereza. There, he communicates with his son after having to deal with the consequences of a letter to the editor in which he likens the Czech Communists to Oedipus (although this was unintentional). Later, his son Simon tells Sabina that Tomáš and Tereza died in a car crash. His epitaph is He wanted the Kingdom of God on Earth.
* Tereza - Young wife of Tomáš. A gentle, intellectual photographer, she delves into dangerous and dissident photojournalism during the Soviet occupation of Prague. Tereza does not condemn Tomáš for his infidelities, instead characterising herself as weaker than he is. She is mostly defined by the division she places between soul and body due to her mother's flagrant embrace of all the body's grotesque functions which has led Tereza to view her body as disgusting and shameful. Throughout the book she expresses a fear of simply being another body in Tomáš's array of women. Once Tomáš and Tereza move to the countryside she devotes herself to taking care of cattle and reading. During this time she becomes fond of animals, reaching the conclusion that they were the last link to the paradise abandoned by Adam and Eve, and becomes alienated from other humans.
* Sabina - Tomáš's favorite mistress and closest friend. Sabina lives her life as an extreme example of lightness, finding profound satisfaction in the act of betrayal. She declares war on kitsch and struggles against the constraints imposed by her puritan ancestry and the communist party. This struggle is shown through her paintings. She occasionally expresses excitement at humiliation, shown through the use of her grandfather's bowler hat, a symbol that is born during one sexual encounter between her and Tomáš, before it eventually changes meaning and becomes a relic of the past. Later in the novel she begins to correspond with Simon while living under the roof of some older Americans who admire her artistic skill. She expresses her desire to be cremated and thrown to the winds after death - the last symbol of eternal lightness.
* Franz - Sabina's lover and a Geneva professor and idealist. Franz falls in love with Sabina whom he (erroneously) considers a liberal and romantically tragic Czech dissident. Sabina considers both of those identities kitsch. He is a kind and compassionate man. As one of the dreamers of the novel, he bases his actions on loyalty to the memories of his mother and of Sabina. His life revolves completely around books and academia eventually to the extent that he seeks lightness and ecstasy by participating in marches and protests, the last of which is a march in Thailand to the Cambodian border. While in Bangkok, after the march he is mortally wounded during a mugging. Ironically, he always sought to escape the kitsch of his wife, Marie-Claude, but dies in her presence allowing Marie-Claude to claim he always loved her. The inscription on his grave was: "A return after long wanderings."
* Karenin - The dog of Tomáš and Tereza. Although physically a female, the name given always alludes to masculinity, and is a reference to the husband of Anna in Anna Karenina. Karenin lives his life according to routine and displays extreme dislike of change. Once the married couple moves to the country, Karenin becomes more content than ever as he is able to enjoy more the attention of his owners. He also quickly befriends a pig named Mefisto. During this time Tomáš discovers that Karenin has cancer and even after removing a tumor it is clear that Karenin is going to die. On his deathbed he unites Tereza and Tomáš through his "smile" at their attempts to improve his health. When he dies, Tereza expresses a wish to place an inscription over his grave: "Here lies Karenin. He gave birth to two rolls and a bee" in reference to a dream she had shortly before his death.
Film
Main article: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (film)
In 1988, an American-made film adaptation of the novel was released starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Lena Olin, and Juliette Binoche.
Synopsis
The Unbearable Lightness of Being takes place in Prague in 1968. It explores the artistic and intellectual life of Czech society during the Communist period, from the Prague Spring to the Soviet Union’s August 1968 invasion and its aftermath. The characters are Tomáš, a successful surgeon; his wife Tereza, a photographer anguished by her husband's infidelities; Tomáš’s lover Sabina, a free-spirited artist; and the secondary characters Franz, the Swiss university professor and lover of Sabina; and Simon, Tomáš’s estranged son from an earlier marriage.
Challenging Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence (the universe and its events have already occurred and will recur ad infinitum), the story’s thematic meditations posit the alternative that each person has only one life to live, and that which occurs in that life, occurs only once and shall never occur again — thus the “lightness” of being; whereas eternal recurrence imposes a “heaviness” on our lives and on the decisions we make (it gives them weight, to borrow from Nietzsche's metaphor), a heaviness that Nietzsche thought could be either a tremendous burden or great benefit depending on one's perspective.
The German expression Einmal ist keinmal encapsulates “lightness” so: “what happens but once, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all”; if concluded logically, life ultimately is insignificant. Hence, because decisions do not matter, they are rendered light, because they do not cause personal suffering. Yet, simultaneously, the insignificance of decisions — our being — causes us great suffering, perceived as the unbearable lightness of being consequent to one’s awareness of life occurring once and never again; thus no one person’s actions are universally significant. This insignificance is existentially unbearable when it is considered that people want their lives to have transcendent meaning. As literary art, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is considered a modernist humanist novel and a post-modern novel of high narrative craft.[citation needed]
Publication
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) was not published in the original Czech until 1985, as Czech: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí, by the exile publishing house 68 Publishers (Toronto, Canada). The second Czech edition was published in October 2006, in Brno (Czech Republic), some eighteen years after the Velvet Revolution, because Kundera did not approve it earlier. The first English translation by Michael Henry Heim was published in hardback in 1984 by Harper & Row in the US and Faber and Faber in the UK and in paperback in 1985. The US paperback was reprinted in New York City by Perennial in 1999 with ISBN 0-06-093213-9.
Characters
* Tomáš - The story's protagonist: a Czech surgeon and intellectual. Tomáš is a light-hearted womanizer who lives for his work. He considers sex and love to be distinct entities: he copulates with many women but loves only his wife, Tereza. He sees no contradiction between these two activities. He explains womanizing as an imperative to explore the idiosyncrasies of people (women, in this case) only expressed during sex. At first he views his wife as a burden he is obligated to take care of, but this changes when he abandons his twin obsessions of work and womanizing and moves to the country with Tereza. There, he communicates with his son after having to deal with the consequences of a letter to the editor in which he likens the Czech Communists to Oedipus (although this was unintentional). Later, his son Simon tells Sabina that Tomáš and Tereza died in a car crash. His epitaph is He wanted the Kingdom of God on Earth.
* Tereza - Young wife of Tomáš. A gentle, intellectual photographer, she delves into dangerous and dissident photojournalism during the Soviet occupation of Prague. Tereza does not condemn Tomáš for his infidelities, instead characterising herself as weaker than he is. She is mostly defined by the division she places between soul and body due to her mother's flagrant embrace of all the body's grotesque functions which has led Tereza to view her body as disgusting and shameful. Throughout the book she expresses a fear of simply being another body in Tomáš's array of women. Once Tomáš and Tereza move to the countryside she devotes herself to taking care of cattle and reading. During this time she becomes fond of animals, reaching the conclusion that they were the last link to the paradise abandoned by Adam and Eve, and becomes alienated from other humans.
* Sabina - Tomáš's favorite mistress and closest friend. Sabina lives her life as an extreme example of lightness, finding profound satisfaction in the act of betrayal. She declares war on kitsch and struggles against the constraints imposed by her puritan ancestry and the communist party. This struggle is shown through her paintings. She occasionally expresses excitement at humiliation, shown through the use of her grandfather's bowler hat, a symbol that is born during one sexual encounter between her and Tomáš, before it eventually changes meaning and becomes a relic of the past. Later in the novel she begins to correspond with Simon while living under the roof of some older Americans who admire her artistic skill. She expresses her desire to be cremated and thrown to the winds after death - the last symbol of eternal lightness.
* Franz - Sabina's lover and a Geneva professor and idealist. Franz falls in love with Sabina whom he (erroneously) considers a liberal and romantically tragic Czech dissident. Sabina considers both of those identities kitsch. He is a kind and compassionate man. As one of the dreamers of the novel, he bases his actions on loyalty to the memories of his mother and of Sabina. His life revolves completely around books and academia eventually to the extent that he seeks lightness and ecstasy by participating in marches and protests, the last of which is a march in Thailand to the Cambodian border. While in Bangkok, after the march he is mortally wounded during a mugging. Ironically, he always sought to escape the kitsch of his wife, Marie-Claude, but dies in her presence allowing Marie-Claude to claim he always loved her. The inscription on his grave was: "A return after long wanderings."
* Karenin - The dog of Tomáš and Tereza. Although physically a female, the name given always alludes to masculinity, and is a reference to the husband of Anna in Anna Karenina. Karenin lives his life according to routine and displays extreme dislike of change. Once the married couple moves to the country, Karenin becomes more content than ever as he is able to enjoy more the attention of his owners. He also quickly befriends a pig named Mefisto. During this time Tomáš discovers that Karenin has cancer and even after removing a tumor it is clear that Karenin is going to die. On his deathbed he unites Tereza and Tomáš through his "smile" at their attempts to improve his health. When he dies, Tereza expresses a wish to place an inscription over his grave: "Here lies Karenin. He gave birth to two rolls and a bee" in reference to a dream she had shortly before his death.
Film
Main article: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (film)
In 1988, an American-made film adaptation of the novel was released starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Lena Olin, and Juliette Binoche.