t was Gerstäcker’s mother. She held out her trembling hand to K. and had him sit down beside her, she spoke with great difficulty. It was difficult to understand her, but what she said”—thus ends Franz Kafka’s final novel, The Castle. If he intended to finish the novel (a point of debate among Kafka aficionados), then death intervened to ensure that the work literally ended mid-sentence.
The ending of The Castle captures the impact of human mortality. Accidental though it may be, its sheer incoherence makes it a stroke of genius in its presentation of the human condition.
Read Full Article »