An Architectural Reading of Franz Kafka’s The Castle

The works of Franz Kafka have a very rich metaphorical context of space and architecture. By using spatial and architectural metaphors, he represented the modern world and the experiences and feelings of the modern individual, such as insecurity, fear, alienation, and despair. The “dark and sometimes surrealistic” novel, The Castle, published after Kafka’s death in 1926, also focuses on alienation, bureaucracy, and the despair of modern man’s attempts to stand against the system. It is full of architectural and spatial metaphors waiting to be interpreted by the reader. What these metaphors point out often goes beyond their physical existence; thereby, a multi-layered meaning is created. Any interpretation of this multi-layered meaning requires the understanding and deciphering of the implicit and symbolic meanings of the objects, architectural elements, and spaces. The fact that architecture and space are the prerequisites for all kinds of human activities makes it inevitable that they play an important role in literature, as they do in any subject that concerns human life. However, the spaces in The Castle not only form the stage where human life takes place but go beyond that and become an expression of the psychological effects created by the social and cultural conditions of the modern world on individuals. What is told in the castle is not the space itself but its meaning. In this context, the article focuses on the architectural interpretation of the novel by deciphering the possible implicit and symbolic meanings of the architectural elements and spaces, which are narrated throughout the novel.

Keywords: Alienation, Ambiguity, Architecture, Being at home, Bureaucracy, Complexity, Despair, Homelessness, Identity, Insecurity, Interpretation, Meaning, Metaphor, Modern individual, Modernity, Place, Space, Self-the other, Sense of belonging, The Castle.