US-China Foreign Language, June 2019, Vol. 17, No. 6, 287-296 doi:10.17265/1539-8080/2019.06.004
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The Outsider in Labyrinth: An Analysis of Kafka’s The Castle Zhang Qin South China Business College, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangdong, China
The openness of Kafka’s stories arises from the labyrinth atmosphere in his works, which is the greatest virtue in him. The paper mainly focuses on The Castle, and tries to find out what labyrinth Kafka has created in it, through the analysis of his unique writing style: ambiguous setting, unusual narrative angle, and curious use of language. He enhances the aura of labyrinth by picturing the characters, and he not only manages to exclude readers from his inner world, but also creates a system, or circumstance, in which an outsider who keeps searching for a sense of belonging, for the meaning of existence is emerged. Keywords: Kafka, outsider, labyrinth, The Castle
Introduction The Castle has frequently been treated as a metaphysical essay and an excellent expressionistic novel by Kafka. Sontag Susan in her critical thesis Against Interpretation (2001) categorized those interpreters of Kafka’s work into three, social allegory, psychoanalytic allegory, and religious allegory. She asserts that the work of Kafka has been subjected to a mass ravishment by no less than these three armies. Apparently, she is reluctant to interpret Kafka in a way that “content” and “form” of one text are separated1 but tries to dig “behind” the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one, which is what a work of art by definition says (“What X is saying is…,” “What X is trying to say is…,” “What X said is…”, etc.) (Susan, 2001, p. 4). What is Kafka trying to say? That is a question. The aim of all commentary of art is to show “how it is what it is” (Susan, 2001, p. 14), even “that it is what it is”, rather than to show what it means. We should, as Susan says, “leave the work of art alone” and pay “more attention to form in art” (p. 13). Keeping to this principle, with respect to Kafka, and considering the openness of Kafka’s works, there comes the paper. The parable labyrinth has inspired a great many authors to make use of it in their own works to mirror an individual’s uncertainty and anxiety to the environment. In The Castle, Kafka uses unique writing skills to combine precise “realistic” detail with absurdity, careful observation, and reasoning on the part of the
Acknowledgement: It is funded by the key program of the English Language and Literature Guangdong Province, 2016. Zhang Qin, M.A., professor, Department of English Language and Culture, South China Business College, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangdong, China. 1 According to Sontag, the emphasis on “content”-based art analysis stems from the early mimetic art theories (art as an imitation of reality) which were first meant to be derogatory (Plato) but later defended (Aristotle, art as catharsis). This defense, still based on the mimetic theory, continued the consideration of art as “representing” something (an idea, concept, the content) which had to be explained (interpreted) and hence a separation of content from form.