It is an historical allegory. All that remains of the old order is a prophecy, written on his gravestone, that he “will rise again and lead his adherents from this house to recover the colony. Earlier in the story when the officer is in full flight about the glory days of the former commandant the reader is treated to a typical example of Kafka’s ironic black humor. The explorer, representing the humanitarian outlook of a secularist culture, visits an earth that is in a state of sin. After taking the explorer to the tea room beneath which the old Commandant is buried, and chatting there with some friends, he and the soldier chase after the explorer, apparently wanting to leave the island on his boat, but they make only a half-hearted attempt to escape and are left behind as the explorer is ferried to his steamship. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. . Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. The ambiguity of his role unsettles him. He is “fundamentally honorable and unafraid,” but he does not intervene during the execution or when the officer takes his own life. Instead, he threatens him with a heavy rope to prevent him “from attempting the leap.” Perhaps Kafka means to have the explorer show his contempt for the condemned man’s previously demonstrated refusal to extricate the officer from the machine’s harrowing needles. How might it be improved? Fear in the face of the inexplicable and resultant flight appear again and again in Kafka; e.g., Karl Rossmann in Amerika finds refuge in an illogical utopia and never grows up; in “Die Verwandlung” the escape is the entire story. Neumeyer, Peter. “If the judicial process which the officer cherished have been actually so close to its end . Rather than trying to actively reform the system, it appears he is hoping to change things through benign neglect. From beginning to end, the story seems to move in ways that... How would you define 'evil' in "In the Penal Colony"? In the Penal Colony Themes Frustration and Meaning. These critics have written about how such variant The image of a slow, torturous death may seem to be only about the death of the mortal body, but it also brings up questions about psychic pain. It is the explorer who takes flight. Kafka’s second novel, The Trial, and the story “In the Penal Colony” were written in 1914. Critical responses to the story have largely been concerned with interpreting its allegorical aspects, and with placing such interpretations in the context of Kafka’s other writings and of certain biographical issues, such as his relationship with his father. In 1917 Kafka finished a series of stories known as the “Country Doctor Cycle.” These are surreal tales told in a lowkey, realistic style. 1, September, 1965, item #11. This is the first time, apart from in the story’s title, that readers are made aware that this is a penal colony. Detailed explanations, analysis, and citation info for every important quote on LitCharts. There has been no agreement on the allegory it presents, and recent criticism has come to accept this fact. The fact that the Officer, who maintained that argument, dies quickly and brutally rather than being shown to have a religious experience while being tortured to death suggests that we ought to take this idea with a healthy dose of skepticism. This theme is poignantly resonant of Kafka's own struggle to find meaning in his life. Share in the comment section. In the following excerpt, the critics use Austin Warren’s interpretation of Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” to demonstrate that the story is “an allegory concerning the state of religion in the modern world.”, [This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]. “In the Penal Colony” has the ghoulish intensity and enigmatic atmosphere of a dream. The explorer and the officer are the only characters in the story who act decisively, in accordance with their own beliefs. Kafka is not, strictly speaking, an Expressionist writer, but his work shares many Expressionist themes: hatred of authority and the father-figure; a belief that the universe and natural world are hostile to mankind; the knowledge, made graphic by the outbreak of World War I, that an old order was passing. What the explorer is confronted with on the penal island is a moral choice between the old law and the new—the story arranges itself as a kind of contest between the two regimes to win his concurrence. Due to the machine’s twelve-hour cycle, victims become conscious of their sinfulness before the end comes. Because the explorer has denounced the Old Order as inhumane for its cruel treatment of the soldier-prisoner, he might be expected to exhibit his own humaneness by taking the freed man aboard his boat as he leaves the island. It is slack, shallow, and worldly, unable to supply humanity greater than palliatives and fleshly indulgences. But the machine, described with a plethora of realistic detail, remains insubstantial and can actually be seen only as a number of philosophic tenets, the horns of the protagonist’s dilemma. It is not insight into religious truth but into the religious past. It breaks aside whereas within the means of dispatching its final sufferer, presumably symbolizing humankind’s misplaced reliance on machines to carry out completely. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. If left to judge ourselves, might not the verdict, as it was in Kafka’s own case, be mercilessly harsh? In mild of this, he chooses to simply accept the implications of his personal system and throws himself on the mercy of the machine. What the explorer feels toward the old law is a mixture of horror and nostalgia: horror at its cruelty, nostalgia for its spirituality. At the end of the story the explorer leaves the island by rowing to his steamer, one other technical invention of the modern age, however one with out the punitive overtones of the killing machine. Of several experimental paragraphs which he wrote into his 1917 diaries, the following pose certain questions for those who interpret the story as an allegory: The explorer felt too tired to give commands or to do anything. However, the officer claims to have been appointed the penal colony’s sole judge. Its subject matter is the religious history of the world, which it recapitulates in terms of the old times and the new times of a penal colony. In light of this, he chooses to accept the consequences of his own system and throws himself at the mercy of the machine. A dispassionate observer of the “peculiarities of many peoples,” an enlightened modern relativist and naturalist, from first to last he condemns the injustice and the inhumanity of the old law—so much so indeed that he is moved to abandon his attitude of scientific neutrality for once and intervene against the execution. 9, September, 1959) as the primary motive force in animal life (before hunger and sex); “quick and purposive flight of the individual is the first duty toward preservation of the species” (p. 929; my translation). Having read this, the explorer passes out a few coins and then boards a ferry that takes him back to his steamship. It was a routine which made the writing of a novel an arduous business. He is a serving officer in a colonial military. Finally, the officer sacrifices himself to the machine, and in doing so causes it to fall apart. In “In The Penal Colony,” evil is characterized by two attitudes: a zealous faith in authority, and dependence on the machinery of bureaucracy to dispense justice. In the hour of its self-destruction, the machine turns into animated as a horrifying monster that exhibits its enamel because it jabs the officer’s physique and drives its iron spike into his brow, murdering him with out granting him absolution or transcendence. The beings which people dream about are sometimes recognizable as people they know, but they are rarely fully rounded characters, and they do not behave as if they inhabit the real world. Possibly because the injunction it is asked to write—“BE JUST!”—contradicts the despotic nature of the Old Order and therefore violates the nature of the machine’s tyranny. Like most of Kafka’s stories, it is concerned with spiritual need, but it treats this subject in historical terms rather than through an individual who experiences the despair of spiritual darkness in the timelessness of his soul. Typical of Kafka’s protagonists, the explorer is a somewhat “Do Not Teach Kafka’s ‘In The Penal Colony.’” College Literature, Vol. What times there were, my comrade! Should he make a report to the new Commandant, or should he say nothing? The story is disturbing because of the central character’s flight from the conflict. His family and personal relationships were difficult. Because the explorer has denounced the Old Order as inhumane for its merciless therapy of the soldier-prisoner, he could be anticipated to exhibit his personal humaneness by taking the freed man aboard his boat as he leaves the island. Justice and Injustice The story concerns the administration of justice in a penal colony. Setting: A penal colony on a tropical island. They're only accessible on tablets, laptops, or desktop computers, so check them out on a compatible device. One cannot call such a powerful story a failure. Although Kafka wrote “In the Penal Colony” in 1914, and it was published in German in 1919, there was no English translation until 1948. The Harrow’s needles inscribe a different sentence on the body of each condemned person. Somehow he misplaced his power over the colony, however sooner or later he might return and reclaim it. Death redeemed. Furthermore, scholars have argued that the way the apparatus is depicted amounts to an argument against the use of capital punishment at all (Dragich). Wilhelm Emrich, in his critical study of Kafka’s writings published in translation in 1968, gives a reading which is more in tune with Warren’s tightly allegorical interpretation. The execution machine is an historical demonstration to him of the primitive unity of absolute justice and human society, spirit and the world. What’s more…, Religious fervor is an explicit undercurrent throughout “In the Penal Colony.” The old Commandant, who used to run the penal colony and is rumored to someday return, is reminiscent of an authoritarian god, while the officer acts as his lone remaining disciple. Kafka: A Biography, Oxford University Press, 1982, 349 p. A experienced biographer provides insights into Kafka’s personal and family relationships.

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