FRANZ KAFKA
415
finally submits to necessity and who learns of its government only
because he has been accused by it, but through the eyes of quite an-–
other K. This K. comes to it out of his own free will, as a stranger,
and wants to realize there a very definite purpose-to establish himself,
to become a fellow-citizen, build up a life and marry, to find work
and be a useful member of society.
The outstanding characteristic of the
K.
in
The Castle
is
that he
is interested only in universals, in those things to which all men have
a natural right. But while he demands no more than this, it is quite
obvious that he will be satisfied wit1:1 nothing less. He is easily enough
persua8ed to change his profession, but an occupation, "regular
work," he demands as his right. The troubles of K. start because only
the Castle can fulfill his demands; and the Castle will do this either
as an "act of favor" or
if
he consents to become its secret employee
- "an ostensible village worker whose real occupation is determined
through Barnabas," the court messenger.
Since his demands are nothing more than! the inalienable rights
of
rriai:t,
he cannot acce t the
"
from the Castle."
At this point the villagers step in; they try to persuade
K.
that he
lacks experience and does not know that the whole of life is consti–
tuted and dominated by favor and disfavor, by grace and disgrace,
both as inexplicable, as hazardous as good and bad luck. To be in the
right or in the wrong, they try to explain to him, is part of "fate"
which no one can alter, which one can only fulfil.
K's strangeness therefore receives an additional meaning: he
is strange not only because he does not "belong to the village,
and~
does not belong to the Castle," but because he is the only normal and
healthy human being in a world where everyt ng uman and nor–
mal, love and work and fellowship, has been wrested out of men's
hands to become a gift endowed from without--or as Kafka puts it,
from above. Whether as fate, as blessing or as curse, it is something
mysterious, something which man may receive or be denied, but never
can create. Accordingly, K.'s aspiration, far from being commonplace
and obvious, is, in fact, exceptional and scandalous. He puts up a
fight for the minimum as if it were something which embraced the
sum total of all possible demands. For the villagers K.'s strangeness
consists not of his being deprived of the essentials of life but of his ask–
ing for them.
K.'s stubborn singleness of purpose, however, opens the eyes of
some of the villagers; his behavior teaches them that human rights
may be worth fighting for, that the rule of the dastle is not divine
law and, consequently, can be attacked. He makes them see, as they
