The answer lies in what K.'s ambition actually is, and this may be something of which even he is not fully aware. His ambition is very unclear indeed. In the Momus scene he hopes to get to Klamm and beyond him to the Castle itself, but it is left open what getting to the Castle itself really means. In the Bürgel scene K. appears if anything completely uninterested in what Bürgel is saying. The answer is really that there is nothing he wants from Bürgel, because there is nothing he needs from Bürgel. Bürgel, like the Castle system, as he realises following the interview with Erlanger, carries on regardless of him and does not need him.

If K. were a land surveyor, he would surely talk more about his work, and what he needed to do it, and would perhaps set to work on his own account. He does not do so. That is because he is really looking for something else out of the village, something he does not put into words.

He comes into the village, a village he has never visited before, in which he knows no one, and so he is an outsider. Almost immediately somebody appears and challenges his right to be there. K. fights back. Just as outrageously he makes out that he is the Land Surveyor summoned by the Count. In this way he gets to stay in the inn. But then the next day he sets off to get to the Castle to establish his credentials as the Land Surveyor. He perhaps wants to prove his right to stay in the village, because it has been challenged. Michael Kohlhaas suffers an injustice and attempts in overcoming it to overcome all injustice. Even when justice is done he is not satisfied. This is because once he has become aware of a lack he cannot help being aware of this lack, and will perhaps never feel that it has been made up for.

K. is similarly conscious of such a lack, although he is not necessarily conscious of that consciousness. His lack is that he does not feel integrated into the village. The interest in the Castle is like a walking stick that helps him get around the village. His unclear motivation is therefore explained. He does not know what he wants out of the Castle because the Castle is ultimately a pretext, because all that really interests him about it is the achievement (which he gains when he enters Bürgel's room), indeed his interest in the Castle is partly a resistance to being integrated in the village, an expression of his desire not to become absorbed by it.

His response to Klamm's first letter supports this view. Only, he reasons, if he is indistinguishable from Gerstäcker or Lasemann, will paths open themselves to him that would remain hidden were he to rely on the Castle.

The reason why K. sets off on his Castle quest, that is, why he uses the Castle, is that feeling excluded from the village he wants to gain control over it; the Castle represents power over the village, so he associates himself with that power. As he gradually over the course of the book becomes more and more a part of it, he loses interest in reaching the Castle. What he tried to get from the Castle he makes possible for himself.

Let us compare K.'s conversation with Pepi near the end of the novel and what she offers him, with K.'s situation and ambitions earlier in the book. What he needs, a place to live, a job, companionship, are supplied to him via the Castle. In going after Klamm he steals Klamm's mistress-an interestingly retrograde approach to getting someone's favour-who leads him to accept the job at the school. The job at the school is offered him by the Superintendent, who wants to keep him from pursuing Klamm, and made necessary by the Bridge Inn landlady, who throws him out of the Bridge Inn, again in an effort to protect Klamm. The job and accommodation at the school are not what he might have expected as the Land Surveyor, they are a compromise.

At the end of the book Pepi offers him all those things, and they are not a compromise. K. at that moment has nothing and is no longer interested in the Castle; he is at most interested in reclaiming the life with Frieda that he has lost, which cannot be reclaimed. Whatever he has will therefore be an improvement and above all not something that he has to take. For Frieda's sake he had to take the job at the school.

There is a change that has come about, in his attitude as well as his circumstances. Before he was trying to get everything via the Castle. This, as we have seen, was a reaction to feeling excluded from the village. He grows out of this-the Bürgel scene being the turning point-and afterwards is constructing a life for himself.

One of the main differences is that where before he has everything-accommodation, work, companionship-through Pepi he is merely creating the possibilities of all of those things. There is a kind of balance here.

There is a difference between what happens here and the planned ending for the novel that Kafka told Max Brod about. K. was meant not to give up his quest but die worn out by it. And yet it is clear that he loses interest in his quest. Other things acquire greater priority. He indeed does not slacken: there is no point at which he gives up interest in the Castle, he just seems to forget about it, it is not subsequently mentioned (rather as the landlady was not subsequently summoned). After the meeting with Erlanger there is no mention of the Castle. Pepi is as unconnected with the Castle and Klamm as one can be, and indeed all the characters whom K. meets and passes time with after the Bürgel scene are really quite different from the ones he knows earlier.

Thus the novel took a somewhat different direction from the one Kafka anticipated. K. does not slacken in his quest but equally he does not die worn out by his efforts. In Bürgel's room he falls asleep and is renewed (as Richard Sheppard argued). All the writers who have attempted to link the planned ending to the actual extant ending, as though Kafka were working to a plan, as though his view of the novel would not change, completely overlook the last fifth of the novel, following Bürgel, in which the writing carries on supported, as it were on its own momentum, no longer supported by the Castle. As K. continues, new strength can be seen in him. He develops beyond the original quest, to the point that we cannot any longer anticipate his death, and cannot guess what would happen after the end of the story. We are no longer seeing a K. who would exhaust himself on such a quest. Indeed as is now clear, without necessarily even being aware of it, K. has used the Land Surveyor claim and his interest in the Castle as an indirect means of becoming integrated into the village, which perhaps he could not have done without some kind of a vaulting-pole.

Set up 14 December 1998

Last updated 08 March 1999

© R. Millar 1999