Welcome to Gaia! ::

the trial was a brilliant socio political commentary, but the castle was my personal favorite. I don't get the feeling that gaia is the sort of place that people like Kafka or Dostoevsky.

Actually, I don't like Kafka very much. I have had too much dealings with administrative structure in academia, private sector and government institutions to find it amusing or terrifying. It's so annoying that reading about it, albeit in exaggerated form, makes me even more annoyed. This is comparable to certain short works by Chekhov, though fortunately for Chekhov, he didn't dwell on the issue. In light of this, I prefer some of his shorter works like the hunger artist or his sundry two-page meditations on strange creatures. I haven't read Amerika yet, but given my distaste for Kafka right now, I doubt I will venture into that book anytime soon.


Now in my opinion, while the themes in the Trial are a bit more concrete, its overall significance, ideas and underlying philosophies are similar to the kastle. If I had to choose though, I would prefer the Trial because the Kastle suffers from a kind of useless tedium from being incomplete. I could almost imagine Kafka getting bored of writing it near the end (I had the dishonor of reading the unchopped manuscript edition some years ago).

The metamorphosis..well that's a discussion in itself..