Creativity in a Kafkaesque World: What is to Be Learned from the Metaphorical Battles Between Creativity-Promoting and Creativity-Obstructing Forces Within and Outside the Person in the Castle

Creativity depends in large part upon battles that are fought within the self, in pursuing challenging tasks in an ecologically relevant environmental context, between creativity-promoting and creativity-suppressing tendencies. Whether one will be creative, and if so, how creative, depends in part upon which forces win out, and to what extent. One’s possibilities for being creative depend at least as much on this battle as on any creative “ability.” This article analyzes the creativity of K., the main protagonist in Franz Kafka’s novel, The Castle , in terms of extant views on creativity, and specifically in terms of a person × task × situation interaction (PTSI) theory of creativity. In general, one can learn about creativity by analyzing how it plays out in the doings of certain characters in great works of literature. K.’s creative failure results in part from the suppressive tendencies in his environmental context, but also from suppressive attributes within himself that more than cancel out his creativity-promoting attributes. K. had opportunities to be creative and squelched them, not through lack of ability, but rather through closing off the possibilities that could have been open to him.