18) In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka

Plot:

The Officer of the Penal Colony eagerly shows off and explains a complicated torture and execution device to the Traveler. Nearby stands the Condemned Man, guarded by the Solider. Neither the Condemned Man nor the Soldier speak French and don’t understand the conversation between the Traveler and the Officer.

The device is the brainchild of the Old Commandant. The Officer remains one of his few followers and believes the Traveler will advocate for him and the machine with the New Commandant.

It is an expensive and complicated machine, with many parts not always easily replaced. It intended to carve the sentence into the condemned person’s flesh repeatedly, deeper with each pass, until the man dies, which usually takes about twelve hours.

Thoughts:

There are no supernatural elements in this novelette, though some read it as a religious allegory. IMseldomHO, I see that as a stretch, particularly given the ending. I see it as a depiction of human cruelty. The Condemned Man doesn’t know his sentence. He doesn’t even know he’s condemned but regards the machine as something of a curiosity. Not understanding what’s going on doesn’t really make a difference. No one would tell him if he did understand. The chains the Soldier holds tell him he’s in hot water, of course. That’s all he needs to know.

The Condemned Man’s crime was failing in his assigned duty, which was to rise every hour throughout the night and salute his superior. He got caught sleeping.

Life is absurd, and you catch no breaks.

This is another downer of a tale.

The story can be read here:

Bio: Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a German-speaking Czech born in Prague, at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He trained as a lawyer and took a job at an insurance company. In general, his writing deals with absurdity, bureaucratic black holes, and alienation. His best-known works include Der Prozess (1925; The Trial) and the story Die Verwandlung (1915; The Metamorphosis). He died in obscurity.


Title: “In the Penal Colony”
Author: Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
First published: October 1919 in German: the present translation published in 1948