K. first sees the castle and meets the teacher

On the morning after his arrival, K. steps out of the Bridge Inn into a fine winter morning and, for the first time, sees the castle clearly. The castle, which had been hidden by mist and darkness the previous evening, now stands out distinctly in the clear air, its shape altered by a thin covering of snow. K. observes that much less snow has fallen on Castle Mount than in the village, where the snow comes up to the cottage windows and weighs down the low rooftops, while on the mountain everything rises into the air, free and light, or at least that is how it looks from below.

The Castle's Appearance and K.'s Disappointment

K. finds that the castle, as seen in the distance, lives up to his expectations. It is neither an old knightly castle from the days of chivalry nor a showy new structure, but an extensive complex of buildings, a few with two storeys, many lower and crowded close together. If one did not know it was a castle, one might take it for a small town. K. sees only a single tower and cannot tell whether it is a dwelling or belongs to a church. Flocks of crows circle around it. As he comes closer, however, the castle disappoints him; it is only a poor kind of collection of cottages assembled into a little town, distinguished only by the fact that, while it might all be built of stone, the paint has flaked off long ago and the stone itself seems to be crumbling away. K. thinks fleetingly of his own home town, which is hardly inferior to this castle, and reflects that if he had come only to see the place, he would have made a long journey for nothing much.

K. compares the church tower of his childhood home with the tower up above. The former, tapering into a spire and coming down to a broad, red-tiled roof, is certainly an earthly building, but it was erected for a higher purpose than these huddled, low-built houses and makes a clearer statement than the dull, workaday world of this place. The tower up here, the only visible one, turns out to belong to a dwelling, perhaps the main part of the castle. It is a simple, round building, partly covered with ivy, with small windows now shining in the sun, and is built into the shape of a balcony at the top, with insecure, irregular battlements, crumbling as if drawn by an anxious or careless child, standing out zigzag fashion against the blue sky. K. feels that it is as if some melancholy inhabitant of the place, who should really have stayed locked up in the most remote room in the house, had broken through the roof and was standing erect to show himself to the world.

Encounter with the Teacher

K.'s attention is distracted from the castle by the sight of the village school, a long, low building that curiously combines the character of something temporary and something very old, standing in a fenced garden covered with snow. The children are just coming out with their teacher, a small, narrow-shouldered young man who holds himself very upright but without appearing ridiculous. The teacher has already seen K. from a distance, since apart from his own little flock K. is the only living soul to be seen far and wide. K., as the stranger, greets him first, noticing that despite his small stature the teacher is used to being in command. The teacher asks, more gently than K. expected but in a tone suggesting he does not like what K. is doing, whether K. is looking at the castle. When K. says he is a stranger who arrived only yesterday evening, the teacher quickly asks if he does not like the castle, and when K. asks why he should not, the teacher replies, 'Strangers never do.' K. changes the subject and asks if the teacher knows the count, but the teacher says no, and when K. presses, the teacher adds in a louder voice, speaking French, 'Kindly recollect that we're in the company of innocent children.' K. then asks if he may visit the teacher, saying he feels isolated and does not fit in with the local rustics or the castle. The teacher replies that there is no distinction between the local people and the castle, but gives his address: he lodges in Swan Alley, at the butcher's house. K. says he will come, and the teacher nods and goes on with the crowd of children, who all start shouting again and soon disappear along a street that runs steeply downhill.

K.'s Weariness and Reflection

K. is distracted and fretting at this conversation. For the first time since his arrival he feels real weariness. The long journey here had not seemed to affect him at all—he had walked for days, step after step—but now all that physical strain is claiming its due, and at just the wrong time. He is irresistibly drawn to seek new acquaintances, but every new acquaintance leaves him wearier than ever. He forces himself to walk at least as far as the entrance to the castle, but the main street of the village does not lead to Castle Mount; it merely passes close to it before turning aside, as if on purpose, and although it moves no further away from the castle, it comes no closer. K. keeps thinking the road must finally bring him to the castle, and because of that expectation he goes on, but his weariness makes him shrink from leaving the road, and he is surprised by the extent of the village, which seems as if it will never end, with more and more little houses, their window-panes covered by frost-flowers, and with the snow and the absence of any human beings. At last he tears himself away from the road and strikes out down a narrow alley where the snow lies even deeper, pulling his feet out of it as they keep sinking in again. He breaks out in a sweat, and suddenly he stops and can go no further.

Significance of the First View

This first clear view of the castle establishes a central motif of the novel: the castle's inaccessibility and its deceptive ordinariness. K.'s disappointment at the castle's crumbling, village-like appearance contrasts with his earlier expectations and with the symbolic weight the castle carries in the villagers' lives. The teacher's remark that strangers never like the castle, and his refusal to discuss the count in front of the children, foreshadow the village's guardedness and the complex rules that govern contact with the castle. K.'s weariness, which begins here, becomes a recurring theme, undermining his resolve and contributing to his later failures. The encounter with the teacher also provides K.'s first concrete social contact in the village, albeit a cool one, and sets the pattern for his subsequent interactions with the authorities and the villagers, who are suspicious of him yet also, in some cases, willing to offer limited help.