The presence of myth at “The castle” written by Ismail Kadare

Abstract

This analysis consists on treatment a revelation of mythic elements on the work of Ismal Kadare “The castle”, in order to shed light on its structure, which helps us on underlining its importance on literature field and merits. Observations takes place starting with readings from anthropological point of view, as well as literary studies which go around the same purpose. The subject is set far away in time, the events have been displaced during the Ottoman Empire and the era of Skanderbeg. At the time of castles and empires, at the time when a war with Constantinople was around the corner. 

All this, while Kadare was writing the book, was a distant time, which for the eyes of the reader in terms of importance comes in a shape of myth. Choosing an empire as a main subject, in the case of “The castle”, we come across with exaggerated characters by the author, who intent to be primary of importance of the description volume by him. We even have an prearranged  order of characters listed based on their functions such as the hierarchy of an empire in one side,  and Skanderbeg as a central figure of the castle in this case of Albanians,  on the other side. Hyperbolizing those characters comes only as a case of symbols used by the author describing them, trying to sketch them, even helped by putting dialogues on their mouth.

Another mythic element is felt on the word formation, choosing the names of the characters, not only picking old names but, spot on regarding their importance and the massage that they convey. The roman titled “The castle” comes with a paragraph at the beginning of every chapter with an introduction of the events, with a subject of which great things are expected to happen, because he is focused only on the invasion of the castle by chosen characters. The whole thing comes with a modern language, with an emancipated thought, free thinking, which enabled you to reflect toward historic events instead of those contemporary ones.