52 pages • 1 hour read
Franz KafkaThe Castle
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1926A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “At the Chairman’s”
K. goes to visit the chairman in his home. K.’s initial attitude to the meeting is calm acceptance and almost resignation at the idea that “dealing with the Count’s authorities was very simple for him” (57). K. reflects on how he has been treated so far: He has been given small favors and trivial matters to deal with, all intended to distract him from the bigger issues and weaken his defenses so he is less prepared for the “other, greater battles” (58). He feels the “remote and invisible gentlemen” (58) in authority over him will eventually come and tell him to leave. He feels that Klamm holds more power over him in the bedroom, through his connection to Frieda, than he does over K.’s service as a surveyor.
On first meeting the chairman, K. finds “his view of the local authorities very much confirmed” (59). The bedridden chairman welcomes K. and asks him to sit down and explain what he wants. K. reads Klamm’s letter aloud and maintains the feeling of “extraordinary ease of dealing with the authorities” (59). However, the chairman soon dispels this false sense of security as he embarks on a long, convoluted, and extremely frustrating explanation of the process of K. being summoned as a surveyor to the Castle. The chairman explains that a surveyor was requested several years prior but was in fact considered unnecessary by the chairman, who sent a reply that never reached the right department but caused a huge amount of work in the process. The chairman asks his wife, who is his assistant, to look for a copy of the original decree in a filing cabinet crammed with files and papers. K.’s assistants are called to help, too, and the result is a chaotic mess of papers with no result.
The chairman resumes monologuing about the workings of Departments A and B and the names of several bureaucrats who were involved in this nonevent. The image of totally incompetent and unnecessarily officious authority grows and becomes more obscure as the chairman continues. He makes contradictory claims about the roles and procedures of the Castle’s bureaucracy as well as absurd statements like, “Nothing ever happens here without due thought” (62). He notes that should a file ever lose its way, “the excellence of the organization is such that the file must zealously seek the wrong way” (63). The chairman claims that “[o]ne of the operating principles of the authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account” (64). The chairman says that K.’s case is small and insignificant, and yet it has caused great amounts of work. Remaining calm and even amused, K. affirms that he merely wants to “work quietly as a little surveyor at his little drawing board” (66). The chairman invokes more names and makes the farce sound even more complex, until he reaches his conclusion and reiterates that no surveyor was ever needed. He then blames K. for appearing and says, “it seems as if everything is about to happen all over again” (69).
K. says he will try to combat this decision, to which the chairman reassures him that he will not permit K. to be taken on as a surveyor but that K. can always approach him with confidence. K. shows the chairman Klamm’s letter again, but the chairman explains his own interpretation of the contents and language and undermines Klamm’s authority. He claims that “the Castle’s statements shouldn’t be taken literally” (73). On hearing K.’s recount of the phone call made to the Castle on his first night, the chairman denies the reliability of the telephone system but then contradicts himself on that point when K. agrees with him. He denies that K. is being thrown out of the village and the Castle, and insists that he will receive “the most courteous treatment” (73). K. details the sacrifices he made to come to the Castle and the things that keep him there, including his fiancée Frieda. The chairman’s last words are that he will send for K. if a decision is made. K. responds, “what I want from the Castle is not charity, but my rights” (74). K. leaves after retrieving Klamm’s letter from the chairman’s wife, who had turned it into a little boat. He and his assistants leave in a hurry.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Second Conversation with the Landlady”
K. returns to the Bridge Inn, where the landlord is waiting to tell him that his wife is in bed and unable to work because of K. K. goes to see her and learns that her name is Gardena. She dismisses several maids and the landlord from the room. K. notices her appearance, and she behaves in a slightly coquettish way. She is happy that K. is living there now and asks him to be totally honest with her. She shows him an old, faded, crushed photo of a young man and eventually explains that he was a messenger: “The messenger Klamm first summoned me with” (78). K. is briefly distracted by his assistants rattling on the window, but then Gardena reveals that she has three items—the picture, a nightcap, and a shawl—that are mementos of Klamm. She explains that she was summoned by Klamm three times over 20 years ago and that she has never forgotten him. Klamm never summoned her again, which she still feels bitter about.
K. expresses concern about his own future marital contentment in the shadow of Klamm’s relationship with Frieda, but the landlady dismisses his question. She is more concerned with her own position: “Klamm once made me his mistress. How can I ever lose that distinction?” (80). She compares her misfortune to Frieda’s. K. enquires how the landlady and her husband met, and she explains that after Klamm’s rejection, she was found crying by Hans, her future husband. His regular comforting of the upset Gardena was observed by a passerby, who asked them if they would like to take over the inn. It was in fact Hans’s uncle, and Gardena believes the family had hoped she would be a hard worker and thus chose her to take on the responsibility. She rose to the occasion and worked tirelessly, and the inn became so popular that the couple had no debts. However, she ruined her health in the process.
K. posits that Klamm was behind the marriage, as a way to make Gardena forget him. Gardena denies this, repeating that “[a]nyone he no longer summons, he forgets” (83). K. explains at length that Klamm was the cause of her marriage, as his rejection of her caused her to cry and thus set off the chain of events that led to her marriage to Hans. However, K. also realizes that the couple are unhappy due to Gardena’s inability to forget Klamm.
Gardena asks what K. wants from Klamm, and he responds, “for me the most important thing is to be standing there opposite him. I have not yet spoken directly to a real official” (85). The landlady agrees to try and arrange a meeting between K. and Klamm. K. explains that his meeting with the chairman had an unfavorable outcome, to which the landlady retorts, “the chairman is utterly insignificant” (86). The landlady then moves to the kitchen, where lunch preparations start, and many customers enter, provoked by her arrival. As K. leaves to go to Frieda, the landlady “hadn’t a glance to spare” (87) for him.
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Teacher”
K. returns to his room upstairs to find the teacher waiting for him. The room has been cleaned and prettified by Frieda. The teacher seems to only vaguely remember K., and K. is impatient to be on his way to another meeting. Frieda and the assistants rush to prepare K.’s clean clothes and shoes while he answers the teacher “curtly; the sort of thing he had put up with earlier in his isolation, he no longer had to tolerate in his own room” (89). The teacher has a message from the chairman, whom he deems a “worthy, experienced and venerable old man” (89). He accuses K. of being impolite to the chairman, which K. denies. However, K. concedes that he had more important things to worry about than politeness, “for what was at stake was [his] livelihood, which has been jeopardized by the ignominious machinations of officialdom” (89). The teacher explains that he has come with a “semiofficial deposition” (90), which K. does not take seriously, especially after hearing the landlady’s low opinion of the chairman. The teacher declares that the chairman has offered K. a post as the school janitor while the decision about him is pending. The teacher believes that a janitor is absolutely unnecessary and will be a burden. When K. announces that he will not even consider taking the post, the teacher leaves happy and relieved.
Frieda comes back and worriedly tells K. that the landlady wants him out of the inn as soon as possible, because she believes he is only there through her husband’s negligence and because K. rebuffed her earlier. The landlady wants Frieda to stay, but Frieda’s concern is for herself and K. She urges him to temporarily accept the janitor’s post. K. is reluctant, but Frieda convinces him with protestations that he may not get lodging anywhere else in the village. Faced with Frieda’s manipulations, K. has no choice but to accept.
They go to the teacher, who is waiting, having been called back by Frieda. She tells him “we accept the post” (94), but he wants to hear it from K. Once K. agrees, the teacher embarks on a long, official-sounding description of the janitor and his family’s roles. There will be a contract as well as lodging in one of the two schoolrooms, but no salary for the first probationary month. Frieda tries to negotiate on the latter condition, but the teacher insists that this job offer is a favor for which K. should be grateful. K. disputes this idea, saying that he is the one providing the favor. The teacher denies this and declares the job offer a product of the chairman’s “excessively kind heart” (96).
As K. prepares to leave, the maids enter the room carrying their possessions. K. leaves Frieda and the assistants in the room.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Waiting for Klamm”
K. goes to the Gentlemen’s Inn. On his way, he imagines the Castle in the dusk light as a calm, meditative human presence. At the inn, K. tries to enter the room where he had seen Klamm, but it is locked. K. meets Pepi, a young and pretty chambermaid who is “obviously Frieda’s successor” (98) as Klamm’s mistress. K. finds her arrogant but attractive; he asks her if Klamm is inside the room, but on hearing that his sleigh is waiting in the courtyard, K. leaves for that part of the inn. He meets the waiting coachman, who offers him some cognac, which is inside the sleigh. K. cannot resist entering the sleigh and tries the cognac. A good-looking young man, whom K. saw earlier at a window, approaches the sleigh. He mentions that something is terrible and asks how K. got there. He then asks K. to go with him, but K. insists he is waiting for somebody. He stays alone in the courtyard as the young man and the coachman go inside the inn.
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Struggle Against the Interrogation”
K. enters the inn again and finds the young gentleman sitting at a table with a lot of papers around him. The landlady from the Bridge Inn is also in the taproom. Pepi is serving them. The gentleman recognizes K., saying, “The surveyor, finally” (108). The landlady perceives that Klamm is leaving and runs to the keyhole to look out at the courtyard. The young gentleman explains to K. that Klamm left once K. “gave up [his] sentry post” (109) and proclaims how sensitive Klamm is. The landlady joins in this discourse but doubts Klamm’s sensitivity. She explains that they all try to protect Klamm, but he will not talk to anyone he does not want to.
The young gentleman asks K. to answer some questions. He introduces himself as Momus, Klamm’s village secretary who handles all of Klamm’s written work in the village. K. senses the great barrier between himself and Klamm, and thus between himself and the Castle. Momus orders K. to answer his questions in the name of Klamm, and the landlady chimes in with a long monologue about how Momus’s deposition is K.’s only path to Klamm. However, Momus denies this and says the deposition is only for Klamm’s village registry. Nothing can guarantee K. an audience with Klamm. Klamm may not even read K.’s deposition. The landlady further berates K. for asking questions and then threatens that all will be lost if K. does not submit to Momus’s interrogation. Wearied by all this, K. reflects that Klamm is utterly remote and unreachable. As he leaves the inn, he is admonished by the landlord for not allowing himself to be interrogated. The landlord implies this was very unwise.
Chapter 10 Summary: “On the Street”
K. steps into the darkness and the cold blustery weather. Seeing some lights, he is disappointed to find they are his assistants with lamps, sent by Frieda to search for K. They are accompanied by Barnabas, who K. greets with enthusiasm. The cheery mood is soon dimmed by the contents of a letter from Klamm that Barnabas is bearing for K. The letter expresses Klamm’s approval of the surveyor’s work so far and praises K.’s handling of his assistants. K. exclaims, “It’s a misunderstanding” (118). Feeling irritation and despair, he rails at his assistants, who are behaving in a typically nonsensical way. K. appeals to Barnabas but realizes that the messenger is “quite defenseless, all that glittered at such moments was his smile, but it was about as effective as the stars above against the gale down here” (119).
Barnabas promises to deliver a message from K. to Klamm but reveals he has not yet delivered the previous one. At this, K. loses his patience and his temper. Barnabas tells him that Klamm does not welcome news and that “it hasn’t been stipulated that [he] take every message there at once” (121). K. calms down and implores Barnabas to take a message to Klamm right away. He dictates the message to Barnabas using the very officious, bureaucratic language typical of the discourse of the Castle, asking for a personal interview with the director. Barnabas agrees to relay the message orally. When asked what he would like as a reward, he simply passes on his sisters’ regards to K. Satisfied, K. heads to the school with his assistants.
Chapters 5-10 Analysis
Throughout Chapters 5 to 10, K.’s emotions and state of mind alter as his situation becomes more absurd. As the barriers that stand between him and the Castle, and between him and Klamm, multiply, the layers of bureaucracy and confusion grow more complex and impossible to navigate. Characters and their discourse become less reliable, and relationships less trustworthy. K.’s frustration and insecurity grow alongside his sense of isolation and alienation.
At the beginning of his meeting with the chairman, K. still manages to convince himself that the Count’s authorities had “issued for his affairs, apparently once and for all, a definite ruling that was outwardly very much in his favor” (57). Although K. feels that here “one’s official positions and one’s life” are “so intertwined that it sometimes seemed as though office and life had switched places” (58), he still “thought he felt the extraordinary ease of dealing with the authorities” (59). However, after the chairman’s long and rambling description of the mismanagement of K.’s supposed employment as a surveyor, K. admits, “I have an even better understanding of the dreadful mistreatment that I, and perhaps the laws as well, are being subjected to here” (69). K. still claims that he can combat the ruling against him, referring to the powerful people he has encountered, including Schwarzer and friends in the Castle. At this point K. still has faith in people in positions of authority, but the Castle’s inefficient bureaucracy is becoming more evident to him. As he tells the teacher in Chapter 7, “what was at stake was my livelihood, which has been jeopardized by the ignominious machinations of officialdom” (89). In Chapter 8, the narration notes that the Castle, “whose contours were already beginning to dissolve, lay still as ever, K. had never seen the slightest sign of life up there” (99). The longer K. looks, the less detail he observes, “and the deeper everything sank into the twilight” (89)—including K.’s chances of a meeting and a resolution.
In this section, Klamm’s pervasive power and intractability become clearer and reinforce his position as a barrier to K.’s resolution. His influence is felt in every conversation K. has with the characters he meets. The Bridge Inn landlady has suffered a lifetime of unhappiness at Klamm’s hands despite having met him only three times. K. himself believes Klamm was the indirect force behind the landlady’s marriage. Yet the landlady gives K. hope that she can organize a meeting between him and Klamm, albeit in a roundabout manner, saying, “if I succeed through my connections in getting your request for a conversation forwarded to Klamm, promise you won’t try anything on your own initiative until an answer comes down” (86). The words “come down” are significant; they reflect Klamm and the Castle’s position high above the village, remote and unreachable.
The situation’s farcical nature is emphasized in Chapters 8 and 9. Pepi is introduced as Klamm’s new plaything, and in the courtyard K. and Klamm play a game of cat and mouse, in which Klamm escapes unseen despite K.’s efforts to catch him. K remains determined: “I’m waiting here for someone […] no longer in hope of success, but simply as a matter of principle” (105). Momus tells K. he must answer his questions “[i]n the name of Klamm” (111). K. remains resolute in the face of the intended interrogation, yet he now perceives Klamm as a barrier rather than the solution to his problem. He reasons “that he, K. and he alone, […] should approach Klamm, and approach him not just to rest there with him but to get past him and go on into the Castle” (111). After the landlady intervenes, casting further doubt on the likelihood of K. meeting Klamm and conspiring with Momus to coerce K. into giving his deposition, K. “considered Klamm’s remoteness, his impregnable abode, his muteness, broken perhaps only by shouts the likes of which K. had never heard before” (115). Against these forces, K grows increasingly weary of the charade.
Contradictions proliferate in the behavior and discourse of the characters in this section, weakening K.’s diminishing grip on what is real or not. The chairman continuously contradicts himself regarding K’s position and the workings of the Castle authorities. The Bridge Inn landlady is helpful but then turns against K., wanting him off her property. The teacher is delighted by K.’s rejection of the janitor job, but when Frieda explains that they accept the post, the teacher is ready to outline the job’s conditions and description. The characters’ opinions of other community members often contrast completely; the teacher describes the chairman as “that worthy, experienced and venerable old man” (89), whereas the landlady asserts that “the chairman is utterly insignificant” (86). Klamm is described as sensitive by some and yet able to completely blank anyone from his memory by Gardena. K. still holds hope in Barnabas, until the boy brings the incoherent letter from Klamm and admits he has not delivered K.’s letter to Klamm. K finally loses patience, berating Barnabas bitterly, although he had just a moment ago greeted him happily. Each contradiction is an obstacle to the truth and to K.’s quest to reach Klamm or the Castle, and their abundance emphasizes the futility of his effort.
The only character who remains relatively reliable in this section is Frieda, who is loyal and supportive of K.: “Frieda would certainly follow him, K., wherever he wanted to go, in the snow and ice, and no more need be said on that score” (92). She aligns herself with K. using the pronouns “we” and “us” (93) when talking about accepting the janitor’s post, and it is Frieda who tries to negotiate for a salary instead of the probationary period without pay. In Chapter 7 she shows her affection for K. by preparing food for him to take as he leaves the inn. However, her parting words to K.—“You’ll run into so many obstacles […] and then what would my words mean?” (97)—are ominous. Added to this, her incomprehensible patience with and affection for the assistants prevent K. from trusting her completely.
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