Stand Up and Seek the Truth

Here we are last essay of this semester. For this short essay assignment I chose to analyse Kafka’s parable An Imperial Message in two aspects. As he wrote parables without details, in a direct fashion, they can be understand in many different objectives. Parable mentions a messenger who carries message of an emperor, who is about to die and even will die before the message is delivered, to somebody outside of town. Also Kafka makes it clear that messenger will experience a harsh journey and the corresponding message will skew after such a long travel. To come up main concern of this essay two of many interpretations can made for this little story belonging Kafka are religious and political aspect. 

Firstly, If this parable is thought in a religious point of view, I think castle can represent God. From this perspective other things in story can be analysed. Thus, main character is a humble and faithful, waiting for a sign from a person who has more power than him. However, the sign he waits will never be delivered as there is many hinderances between high power and believers. In more general point of view, castle may represent the complete truth from any authority figure. To sum up, a normal person will never accomplish to understand connection with absolute truth as there is many obstacles which mix up in way of message, if it comes. Kafka may say that person should not wait for absolute truth in order to learn it, he should seek it whatever road is needed to be gone.

Secondly, other point of view is political. As Kafka starts his story without background information. We do not know what is happening to emperor and what is the message he sends also from who he sends his message. Thus one can think that this emperor about to die and send message to his princes in order to make them aware of the fact that they are going to rule empire. I story messenger who delivers the message, constantly tries to get a way out of castle but castle is like a maze which never ends. I think that this is emperor who tells his princes that there always be a person or group who will have always a solution to rule the empire. As there is always a ruler, governor of empire, this can be considered as an unending cycle. This point is significant since people in society are parts of this endless cycle and nobody will not be able to reach complete truth in order to rule society or find way out of castle. They should not be allowed since they can exploit power for their sake. Briefly, emperor, in his message talking about this endless cycle while stressing the point that person will never be able to run from castle or find the truth to manage society, if there is one.

To conclude then, Kafka’s parables may be understand in many different aspects. As he did not give details of characters or some basic events. He wrote his stories with shallow details. He just gives the basic things about story to his readers. Which makes his stories suitable to be observed in many different concepts having same basic idea behind them. However this is a short essay, I could only wrote two of them, political and religious aspects. In both, we can say that reaching truth will be difficult like escaping from a massive castle. One should seek complete truth in order to reach it, he should not sit somewhere and wait for it to come.