Transcendental Homelessness

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Franz Kafka’s novel ‘Das Schloss’ can be seen as a very deep and personal autobiographical piece of writing. One very protruding theme Kafka seems to revolve around is the question of transcendence. The novel begins with the character K. arriving late at night to a village wanting a place to stay the night. We do not know much about K., other than the fact that he said that he was a land surveyor. We are not given any history of this character. He is merely a stranger in a village who doesn’t understand it’s rules. The history of K. is here an expression for the basal alienation of modern men. The castle is one of the most important concepts in this novel of aesthetic modernism. In the opening the castle is depicted as; “The Castle hill was hidden, veiled in mist and darkness, nor was there even a glimmer of light to show that a castle was there.” (Kafka, 1926) The sign of modernity is the "transcendental homelessness". Transcendence has a traditional association with the sacred. There is no big leap made by seeing the Castle as occupying the place of the sacred in a traditional society. …show more content…

The fact that the distance of the castle from him is like a dizziness. The castle here acts like the inaccessibility of God and seems to be a sign for the constant religious search of man. Several different hints, such as K.’s comparison of the Castle with his hometown, justify viewing the novel as reflecting the situation of modernity, in which the sacred lacks any clear role in a market economy. What remains unexplained is the fascination that the Castle continues to have over the villagers and especially K. This fascination suggests that Kafka holds the sacred as something continuing to act as an important role in modernity. K. has a more modern attitude towards the Castle than the villagers, in that he questions its wisdom and seeks to overcome the barriers separating the

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