In all of Kafka’s literature, there is a heavy sense that each of our actions is being observed and measured by an unseen, inscrutable force. No work better illustrates this than The Castle, one of his most celebrated works.

Most of Kafka’s attempts at writing a novel were abandoned prematurely: after setting forth on The Child and the City in 1903, he gave up and the manuscripts have disappeared into time’s ether; a proposed collaboration with his friend, Max Brod, yielded a work called Richard and Samuel, also discarded. Amerika was probably the most complete work that could be classified as a novel, though it, too, was cast aside or other projects and published posthumously by Brod.

The Castle falls under the “unfinished novel” classification, though it may be Kafka’s most widely read work after “The Metamorphosis”. The plot is simple, if mysterious: a land surveyor is trying to gain access to a castle in which lies an unseen authority that governs the village under an unknown pretense. The story plays out like a psychological mystery, but the real crux is the governing body. At its heart, The Castle is really about an invisible system of judgment, tabulating unknown actions to weigh their guilt or righteousness according to a system of measurement whose calibration is beyond all comprehension. There is no hope for the protagonist, a fact driven home by the fact that Kafka himself died before finishing the book, leaving the character, a thinly-veiled avatar of himself, unable to solve the mystery of The Castle.

If it sounds crazy, that’s because it is, but in Kafka’s world chaos is good news. The absurdity of the situation is really just normal life taken to its mystic extreme. Let’s take something mundane, something we are affected by everyday, even if we don’t see it. Say, payroll.

Whereas payroll in the early 20th century would have been calculated on an abacus and recorded by hand into some large tome, today it almost exclusively takes place online. Despite never seeing payroll, we as employees are completely beholden to it. Our work lives are constantly under the scrutiny of some unseen force, especially with regard to online payroll. A faceless body holds each employee up to examine their work life. Days off, vacation taken, etc.

Of course, the eponymous castle is a stand-in for the entangled bureaucracy that all normal citizens must face. An example:

“Dealing directly with the authorities wasn’t all that difficult, for no matter how well organized they were, they only had to defend distant and invisible causes on behalf of remote and invisible gentlemen, whereas he, K, was fighting for something vitally close, for himself, and what’s more of his own free will, initially at least, for he was the assailant, and he was not struggling for himself on his own, there were also other forces, which he knew nothing of, but could believe in because of the measures adopted by the authorities.”

It’s natural for the reader to question why Joseph K. allows himself to spin deeper into the precipice of insanity that the village represents; his gung-ho attitude and unwillingness to let things be ultimately brought about his own demise.

It is the castle against the rest of us, and they are likely to always win. What is a man to do? Marvelously, Kafka’s death and the unfinished novel ensure that we’ll never know.