Kafka does not "preach" at us in The Castle, and yet implicitly, the story of K., the "Land-Surveyor" is trying to tell us something about human society. This is what gives the reader a feeling of despair when reading it. It is not just a fiction, but has its roots somehow in our reality.
What this "message" is consists of many parts. I have chosen to focus on one area, but one that I feel is central: What is the Castle? K. is very sure that the boundaries between himself and the Castle are solid and indelible. He also assumes that there are other boundaries which mark out areas which belong to, for instance, the village as opposed to the Castle. It is fitting that his self-professed vocation is that of a Land-Surveyor, one who draws lines between things, demarcating areas according to their use, a zoning official, so to speak. For him, all lines are clearly drawn. There are many divisions, but they are inviolable. He approaches the villagers with this mindset and is bewildered by the many degrees of "Castle-ishness" that he finds. In his single-minded quest to gain admittance to the Castle, he is seeking the Absolute, not realizing that the villagers and the village itself are integral parts of the Castle. One might even postulate that there is no absolute centre to the Castle, but that it is entirely composed of "suburbs" which together make up the whole. K.'s attitude then is entirely out of step with the way the Castle works. It is as if he is peeling an onion, looking for the core, and is discarding the "skin" as he goes. It is only when there is nothing left that he discovers that he has discarded what he was looking for all along. In dismissing certain people and departments, K. has in truth discarded the entire Castle system.
In this sense, K.'s tragic flaw is one that others might consider a virtue. His drive to get "to the root" of things, in the case of the Castle, is a complete failure. His failure, moreover, is related to his character. Since K. is a divided character, he tries to make distinctions between parts of the Castle. For instance, in Chapter 5, he is at great pains to figure out whether Klamm's letter to him is personal or official.1 In fact, throughout the book, K. is consistently concerned with the "officiality" of things, and in response receives only muddled answers (ie. that something is "personal" or "semi-official"). In the final analysis (if there can be such a thing with regard to anything Kafka wrote), K. cannot accept this. So, whether consciously or not, he remains self-deluded regarding the nature of the Castle, along with the village and villagers, if it is even necessary to make distinctions at this point.
What this implies about our world is vague, and yet one gets the impression that Kafka himself felt bewildered in many ways by the world around him. If we compare him to K., we see a man that cannot understand the world's "rules," and so refuses to play by them. Whether there is a possibility of change is not certain. If so, it must be change in the individual, and this, while possible, remains only a remote possibility. Therefore, K. is not quite a hero; neither is he an anti-hero. The Castle leaves the reader as muddled as K., and one cannot decide whether it would be preferable to be kept "outside" or to actually be granted admittance. Neither is it clear whether one could tell when and if this were to happen.
1Franz Kafka, The Castle (New York: Schocken Books, 1954) 92.