Mimetic Desire in the work of Franz Kafka: notes from the narrative The Castle

Abstract

The article analyzes, based on Franz Kafka's The Castle, a trait also present in other Kafkaesque characters, namely, the ease which they stray from their central purposes, diverted by events or situations that are less relevant or even insignificant. To this goal, René Girard's Mimetic Theory is used as the analytical framework, primarily based on his works Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (1961) and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978). The notions of mediation, skandalon, and metaphysical desire are mobilized to shed light on the functioning of the desire of the protagonist of The Castle, the land surveyor K., with the aim of proposing an explanatory hypothesis regarding the "excess" that afflicts him, leading him to failed endeavors. Specialized literary criticism on Kafka was also drawn upon in this work, particularly that of Modesto Carone and Erich Heller, and more briefly, Harold Bloom and Vilém Flusser.