The central character of The Castle is once again a figure simply called by the letter, K. He arrives in a small town claiming to have been hired by the local landowners as a surveyor and announcing that his assistants will follow the next day. Communication with the castle does not support K.'s assertions but before the townspeople can react to K.'s falsehood, the castle confirms K.'s appointment. The rest of the novel involves the attempts by the new surveyor to gain admission to the castle; he eventually dies, largely of neglect, amidst the townspeople among whom he has been living.

As with Kafka's other protagonists, K. remains a shadowy figure possessing neither a past nor an interior and yet he is controlled both by history and ideas. The secondary figures in the novel instruct and obstruct K. in his efforts to gain the attention...