"Honour your superiors!"
Superior/inferior is the most common social division. Those deemed superior are supposed to be respected, admired, or feared by others, and it is rather dangerous to cross the line and treat superiors as if they are equal to inferiors. The Officer says that the phrase “Honour your superiors” is going to be inscribed in the Condemned Man’s skin so that he will learn his lesson properly.
"...our process based on old customs is inhuman."
The influence of customs on an individual's beliefs is often difficult to comprehend. There are so many aspects of everyday life which depend on them. Difficulty arises with customs that humiliate and destroy other people’s dignity. Should we maintain laws, legal procedures and ways of thinking based on old customs that now seem vicious and inhumane? When the Officer says that other people think “our process based on old customs is inhuman,” he hints that the Traveller doesn’t understand their local values. However, some would argue that there are universal standards for how people should be treated—a position that was starting to gain greater currency at the time Kafka was writing. This poses the question of what the Traveller's role in stopping this penal system ought to be.
"Have faith and wait!"
The words “have faith and wait” on the Commandant's grave prophesy that the Commandant is going to return. This doesn't mean that the Commandant is going to rise from the dead but that the values he represented will perhaps return, and his followers will come to power again.
"At this point, almost against his will, he looked at the face of the corpse. It was as it had been in his life. He could discover no sign of the promised transfiguration. What all the others had found in the machine, the Officer had not."
In this one moment the Traveller realizes the fallacies of the Officer's impassioned explanation and defense of the apparatus and the penal system that surrounds it. The apparatus was always flawed, and now this flaw has manifested itself. The true nature of its horror and depravity have been revealed; it cannot bring about transformation but instead mutilates the body beyond recognition.
"The Soldier and the Condemned Man at first did not understand a thing."
The fact that the Condemned Man and Soldier do not speak the same language as the Officer and Traveller represents the large gulf between the rulers and the ruled in the penal colony and, by extension, society's larger system of discipline and punishment. These two men are depicted as ignorant, as victims or tools of the mechanisms of power. They do not have any autonomy or will of their own; their bodies belong to the State. Both of these characters force readers to question the nature of power.
"The Traveller wanted to turn his face away from the Officer and looked aimlessly around him. The Officer thought he was looking at the wasteland of the valley. So he grabbed his hands, turned him around in order to catch his gaze, and asked, “Do you see the shame of it?""
This quote illustrates Kafka's morbid wit and irony. The Officer asks the Traveller if he does not see the shame in letting the apparatus go to waste like this—no audience, no fanfare, etc.—but what is ironic is the fact that the real "shame" is the entire process itself, which is precisely what the Officer does see. The sort of discipline in the penal colony that is required is absurd. The fact that a man has no chance to prove his innocence and is automatically judged guilty is unjust. The passage of a sentence without a defense is also unjust. And the punishment itself is perversely and horrifying painful and torturous. Through this irony Kafka suggests that systems of power are often convinced of their blamelessness when in reality they are unjust and cruel.
"The Traveller was thinking: it is always questionable to intervene decisively in strange circumstances. He was neither a citizen of the penal colony nor a citizen of the state to which it belonged. If he wanted to condemn the execution or even hinder it, people could say to him: You are a foreigner—keep quiet."
In this quote, Kafka exposes the dilemma travellers face when exploring and analyzing foreign lands, be they anthropologists or simply curious individuals. It is easy to judge a culture based on ones own values; perhaps it is wise for the Traveller to be cautious in trying to the society he is visiting. However, what the Traveller is witnessing is a cruel, inhumane practice, and keeping silent in this case would mean being complicit in the injustice. By the end of the short story, the Traveller decides it is more important to speak out against the violent form of capital punishment than to "keep quiet."
"Be just!"
The words inscribed on the back of a criminal always seem to be written in the affirmative. This is shown earlier in the short story when the Officer tells the Traveller that the Condemned Man will have the words "Honour your superiors!" (4) written on his back. The Officer's sentence implies that he has not been just in his use of the apparatus on others, and the fact that he himself chooses what the apparatus will write implies that he acknowledges his wrongdoing.
"This was not the torture the Officer wished to attain. It was murder, pure and simple."
The Traveller sees that the apparatus does not work on the Officer the way the Officer himself said it would. Rather than inscribing a message on the back of its victim by poking needles shallowly and into the back for twelve hours, the apparatus stabs the Officer so deeply that he dies within minutes. This reveals the Officer's entire belief system to be a sham. The torture was always murder, and never truly allowed for a criminal to reach religious transcendence.
"They could still have jumped into the boat, but the Traveller picked up a heavy knotted rope from the boat bottom, threatened them with it, and thus prevented them from jumping in."
Throughout the short story, the Traveller has felt conflicted over his role in the society of the penal colony, and particularly his duty to save the Condemned Man. His moral fortitude in condemning the apparatus resulted in the Condemned Man not being tortured and murdered. However, this quote, the last sentence of the story, leaves the reader feeling unsettled and conflicted. The Traveller has forced The Condemned Man and the Soldier to remain in the penal colony, where even if the apparatus is not used, they are still subjugated in society. This could be read as a commentary on foreign interference with the political affairs of other countries or societies. The Traveller does enough to quiet his conscience, but does not fully rectify the situation.
