# The Castle — Character guide

> Key figures in The Castle by Franz Kafka.

- [K.](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/k.md): K. enters the village as a stranger with a professional claim the authorities flatly disown, and instead of retreating he digs in, treating every rebuff as a problem to be worked. His stubbornness is both engine and flaw
- [Frieda](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/frieda.md): Frieda is the woman K. wins by the door of Klamm's own room, and her defection costs her the landlady's protection and her place among the Castle's servants. She is practical where K. is obsessive, fetching the teacher a
- [Klamm](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/klamm.md): Klamm is the Castle made personal: a name that commands secretaries, opens protocols, and organizes the whole village's hopes without ever granting a real audience. K. does not want to rest in Klamm's circle but to pass 
- [Barnabas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/barnabas.md): Barnabas is K.'s one living thread to the Castle, a messenger whose sincerity is matched only by the uncertainty of whether he is truly employed at all. His family's disgrace and his own unconfirmed status make every err
- [Olga](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/olga.md): Olga is the family's memory and its negotiator with the outside world, the one who explains to K. why Barnabas has no suit, why the bureaux may not be the real Castle, and why her sister's refusal doomed them all. She is
- [Amalia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/amalia.md): Amalia is the family's wound and its conscience: her refusal of Sortini's vile letter saved her honor and condemned her father, her brother, and her sisters to years of village contempt. She moves through the house with 
- [Jeremiah](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/jeremiah.md): Jeremiah arrives with Arthur as one of K.'s assigned assistants — identical, useless at surveying, and impossible to tell apart, so that K. insists on treating them as a single man. Frieda reveals that Jeremiah was her c
- [Pepi](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/pepi.md): Pepi takes over Frieda's serving duties at the Herrenhof and inherits both the work and the shadow of her predecessor, whom the guests and the landlord still remember fondly. She is proud, touchy, and eager to prove that
- [Momus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/momus.md): Momus conducts the protocol interview in which K. is finally granted a channel toward the Castle, and he does so with the bland, self-important courtesy of a man who knows his function outranks his person. He commands K.
- [Brunswick](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/brunswick.md): Brunswick was once a respected tradesman, third in command of the Fire Brigade, with customers and standing in the village. After Sortini's note to Amalia and the family's refusal to grovel, he loses his business and beg
- [Hans](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/hans.md): Hans is a serious, well-mannered pupil at the school where K. serves as janitor, and he treats K. with a respect the rest of the village withholds. He wants to help — he offers to talk to his mother, who he believes coul
- [Sortini](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/sortini.md): Sortini is rarely seen and barely known, a small, reflective man with furrowed brow who once handed over a fire-engine at a Fire Brigade celebration and then vanished back into the Castle's anonymity. His note to Amalia 
- [Schwarzer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/schwarzer.md): A Castle official's son who challenges K.'s arrival at the inn.
- [Lasemann](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/lasemann.md): A village tanner who hosts K. on his first night.
- [Mizzi](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/mizzi.md): The landlady's assistant at the Bridge Inn.
- [Galater](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/galater.md): A Castle official mentioned in village gossip.
- [Erlanger](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/erlanger.md): A Castle official who summons K. for a brief interview.
- [Teacher](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/teacher.md): The village schoolteacher who hires K. as a janitor.
- [Arthur](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/arthur.md): One of K.'s two assistants assigned by the Castle.
- [Fräulein Gisa](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters/gisa.md): A schoolteacher in the village.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_se/characters