The Operation Of Power

As a German-language fiction writer, Franz Kafka was a genius and wizard in the literature history of the 20th century. Both the writer and his works attracted great attention of the critics. Kafka was not known when he was alive. After WWII, his works shook the world and aroused a long-lasting rush of reading Kafka's works. As the most notable novel by Kafka, The Castle told a story about K's unremitting efforts for the untouchable aim. Full of Kafka's wise observations toward the absurd life and exposing the sense of horror and isolation suffered by modern people, The Castle was the most representative work of "Kafkaesque" style. Previous studies on The Castle at home and abroad focused on what the castle stood for and what K sought for. This thesis altered the emphasis and intended to reveal the world exposed in The Castle and the operation of the power based on Foucault's theory on power.In The Castle, Kafka exposed an absurd world to us in a perceptional way while Foucault interpreted the world's absurdity in a rational way. The absurd allegory written by Kafka and the power theory put forward by Foucault awakened us and showed us the true situation we human beings lived in. Foucault explained power from three perspectives: madness and power, discipline and power and sexuality and power. Therefore, this thesis also chose those three perspectives to interpret The Castle, and attempted to make an inquiry of K's tragedy.This thesis consists of four parts. Chapter One will present some information about Kafka and his writing style, and briefly introduce The Castle and previous studies about the novel. The second part is mainly concerned with Foucault's power theory, including the relation of power and madness, power and discipline and power and sex. This part will also introduce the inter-relation between Kafka's novel and Foucault's theory. In Chapter three, K's tragedy will be analyzed from three perspectives: the relation of madness and civilization, the construction of power and disciplinary techniques in the castle, and analysis of several kinds of sexual relationship according to Foucault's sexuality theory. The fourth chapter is the conclusion, which is the summary of all the above analysis and tells us the significance of this research.