Maurice Stanley Friedman compared Kierkegaard and Kafka in his 1963 book "Problematic rebel, an image of modern man" (p. 386) K. is at times lacking in courage and at other times brazenly impudent, and he is far from "observing every rule of propriety with a glad and confident enthusiasm," like Kierkegaard's "knight of faith." But he does not exalt the Castle "meanly" and, unlike the villagers he dares "to enter those palaces where not merely the memory of the elect abides but . . . the elect themselves." He knows the Angst of Kierkegaard's "knight of faith" who is "born outside the universal" and walks "a solitary path, narrow and steep . . . without meeting a single traveller." Passage after passage in The Castle, indeed, shows K. as essentially a Single One, who has the courage to meet the officials face to face and who is willing to dispense with all the universal patterns and official procedures if he can do so.