Kafka's K. versus the castle

Kafka's last novel is preoccupied with an elusive authority named "the Castle". By insisting on entering the Castle, the protagonist K. inadvertently deconstructs its very presence: K. discovers that the Castle only exists as a rhetorical paradigm in the language of the village. This experience is the basis for K.'s existential maturation. Instead of striving to find meaning in a transcendent authority, K. gradually becomes responsible for his own subjective identity.