Imagological motives of Franz Kafka's novel “The castle” (to the centenary of its writing)

Abstract

In the article, we analyze some imagological aspects of Franz Kafka's novel “The Castle” in accordance with modern problems of literature and society. We consider the issue of the interaction of cultural traditions in a mostly aggressive environment. Attention is paid to the image of a foreigner who is trying to integrate into a society that rejects him. Here are presented the results of a comparative analysis of both the works of Franz Kafka himself and similar works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.  The issue of national identification is raised using the example of the Jewish component, which was a passing object of the writer's research.  Special attention is paid to female characters in the novel “The Castle”, which fully demonstrate different levels of understanding of the main character in his desire to integrate. It is shown that gender and age differences have an integrating and disintegrating character, but, at the same time, are not decisive in the structure of the integrity of human perception of the world.  The novelty of the research can be seen in the fact that imological aspects are also changing in the XXI “digital world”.  The relevance of the study is determined by the centenary of the writing of the novel “The Castle”, which still gives rise to new and new interpretations of images. It has been proven that Franz Kafka raises more questions than offers their solutions (the absence of a "solution" is optionally assumed). A review of the latest domestic and foreign research on the topic of the article was carried out.

The protagonist of the novel “The Castle” is constantly surrounded by women. These female artistic images in many ways embodied the author's personal life experience. Such autobiographical experience has a wide palette – these are the images of Franz Kafka's three sisters, and images of his acquaintance with the physiology of sexual relations in a brothel, and the cautious image of his mother. All these connotations merged into an amazing emotional symphony.