"The Castle" by Kafka. And what is "Kafkaesque"?

READING most of the novella is required if you intend to participate in the discussion.

If you are unable to read, then you may join the Meetup, yet only as a listener unless you have read other Kafka novellas.

Here's a quick summary:
Franz Kafka’s The Castle is a haunting, unfinished novel about a man named K., who arrives in a snow-covered village claiming to be the land surveyor summoned by the mysterious authorities of the Castle looming above. But from the moment he arrives, nothing is clear. No one knows why he’s there, or if he was ever really summoned. Every attempt he makes to gain access to the Castle, to speak to someone in charge, or to assert his identity, is met with circular logic, shifting answers, and an invisible wall of bureaucracy.

What unfolds is not a traditional quest for answers, but a slow, surreal unraveling of meaning itself. The Castle is never seen from the inside. Its officials are always sleeping, unavailable, or referenced only through other people’s contradictory stories. K. moves through a world where logic fails, systems dominate without explanation, and every effort to gain clarity results in deeper confusion.

This is the essence of the Kafkaesque: a suffocating sense of existential powerlessness in the face of a faceless system; a reality where rules exist but make no sense; where individuals are caught in endless procedures, delays, and miscommunications. It’s a world where the absurd feels ordinary, and the more you struggle to assert control, the more it slips away.

*In our discussion, we’ll explore how The Castle reflects not just a fictional nightmare, but **a symbolic landscape of modern life—*where institutions can feel impenetrable, identity is unstable, and human desires are quietly crushed under the weight of systems that do not see us.

Join us!

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