In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka
"In the Penal Colony" is a short story by Czech writer Franz Kafka that delves into themes of justice, punishment, and authority within a fictional penal colony. The narrative centers around an explorer who visits the colony at the invitation of its new commandant to investigate its practices. He encounters a complex execution machine, designed to inflict severe punishment on prisoners, which is operated by a devoted officer who reveals the grisly details of its operation. The officer embodies the harsh principles of the previous commandant's regime, emphasizing a belief in absolute guilt without due process, which starkly contrasts with the explorer's more humane and modern values.
As the explorer witnesses the execution of a prisoner who has not been informed of his crime or allowed a trial, he grapples with the moral implications of such a brutal system. Despite being moved by the officer's fervent loyalty to the old order, the explorer ultimately rejects the barbaric methods employed in the colony. In a dramatic turn, the officer submits himself to the machine, believing it will redeem him, only to meet a fatal end. The story culminates in the explorer's decision to abandon his mission and leave the colony, symbolizing a rejection of the oppressive values he encountered. Kafka’s work invites reflection on the nature of justice and the human condition, resonating with diverse interpretations across various cultural contexts.
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In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka
First published: "In der Strafkolonie," 1919 (English translation, 1941)
Type of plot: Allegory
Time of work: The early twentieth century
Locale: A penal colony on an island in an unspecified, remote region of the world
Principal Characters:
An explorer , who arrives in the penal colony to investigate its conditionsAn officer , who believes in the organization of the colony as devised by the dead commandant
The Story
An explorer arrives in a penal colony, at the invitation of its new commandant, to investigate its organization and report his findings to a commission created by the commandant. Franz Kafka calls the explorer Forschungsreisende, a "research traveler," and in the story's context he is clearly more than an amateur: He is an enlightened modern naturalist and relativist, trained to observe and analyze dispassionately the customs of diverse cultures—such comparative anthropologists as Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) come to mind.
The explorer is introduced to the machine that is the central edifice of the colony's structure by an officer zealously loyal to the former commandant's administration of the colony. The machine is an instrument of torture and execution, the complex operation of which is described in devoted detail by the officer. "It's a remarkable piece of apparatus," he exclaims in the story's opening words, and he proceeds to explain, with the rapture of a totally committed believer, the coldly glamorous intricacy of the coordination of its three main parts: the "Bed," on which the condemned prisoner is strapped; the "Designer," whose cogwheels control the machine; and the "Harrow," which adjusts its needles to the dimensions of the condemned man's body and then engraves his sentence on it. The prisoner is thus literally forced to feel the pain of his punishment, in a ritual that lasts twelve hours.
The criminal whose execution the explorer is invited to witness is a servant/sentry assigned to a captain. His duties are bizarrely twofold: to serve his master by day and to protect him by night. The previous night the captain had found him derelict in his obligation to rise every hour and salute his master's door. Has he had a trial? No. Does he know his sentence? No: It is "HONOR THY SUPERIORS!" and "He'll learn it on his body." After all, says the officer, he is acting in the spirit of his former commandant's plans for the colony, and his "guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted."
Such monolithic simplicity in applying an ethic of unrelenting vindictiveness and cruelty appalls the explorer, whose temperament has been shaped by Western concepts of due process, tolerance, and humaneness. He therefore refuses the officer-judge's plea that he intercede on behalf of the Old Order's judicial system when appearing before the liberal new commandant. Because he is "fundamentally honorable and unafraid," he tells the officer, "I do not approve of your procedure." However, he adds, "your sincere conviction has touched me, even though it cannot influence my judgment."
The officer's response is cryptic: "Then the time has come." He frees the condemned prisoner, adjusts the Harrow's legend to read "BE JUST!" and submits his own body to the machine. However, instead of redeeming him, as the officer insisted that it would, the machine kills him and in the process disintegrates, ending the Old Order's execution of "justice."
Shaken by this strange martyrdom, the explorer decides to issue no report to the new commandant. Instead he seeks out the grave of the old commandant, reads the inscription on the tombstone, which prophesies his return, and then leaves the penal colony by boat, refusing to take with him the liberated former prisoner and a fellow soldier.