Summary
Out in the middle of a deep and sandy valley with the sun blazing overhead, an Officer, a Traveller, a Condemned Man, and a Soldier stand in front of a mysterious apparatus. The Officer and The Traveller stand together, while the Soldier holds the bound Condemned Man. The Condemned Man has a vacant, resigned expression.
The Traveller does not seem very interested in the apparatus as the Officer enthusiastically carries out maintenance on it. The Officer announces it is ready and climbs down.
The Traveller comments that it is too hot for such uniforms in the tropics, and the Officer agrees. The Officer changes the subject to the apparatus and says it should now work on its own, but adds that occasionally breakdowns do happen, in which case they are addressed.
The Officer asks the Traveller if he wants to sit down and the latter agrees reluctantly. He looks into the pit, which the apparatus borders. The Officer asks if the Commandant has explained the apparatus and the Traveller waves his hand vaguely, giving the Officer all he needs to commence his description.
He begins by explaining that the apparatus was the previous Commandant’s invention; in fact, the whole penal colony was his work. It was so well done that even if a new Commandant came in, which happened recently, the old ways would hold on for a long time.
The Traveller is having a hard time concentrating due to the pounding heat. He feels a flicker of admiration for the Officer, who chats companionably and tweaks things on the machine with apparent ease. He notices that the Soldier seems weary and hot and that because he and the Condemned Man do not speak French they cannot follow what the Traveller and Officer are saying. Interestingly the Condemned Man does seem like he is trying to follow what the Officer says, watching his gestures and looking at the Traveller when the Officer does.
The Officer describes the apparatus's three parts: the Bed, the Inscriber, and the Harrow. The Harrow is named for its arrangement of needles pointing down like the teeth of a harrow, a piece of farming equipment. Condemned people are laid on the Bed, which is covered in cotton wool. They are strapped down naked and must put a protruding lump of felt in their mouth.
The Officer motions the Traveller over. The Traveller seems to be getting more interested. He looks at the massive apparatus, with the Inscriber two meters above the Bed and the Harrow hanging in between.
The Officer sees the Traveller’s burgeoning interest, though he did not notice his earlier ambivalence, and lets him inspect the device. The Condemned Man looks as well. The Officer points out the electric batteries for the Inscriber and Harrow. He explains that the apparatus is precisely calibrated for the Condemned Man's sentence.
The Traveller asks what the sentence is and the Officer stutters in surprise that he thought he knew. He takes out diagrams that he carries with him, made by the former Commandant. He washes his hands because they do not seem clean enough to handle them. He then explains that the law that has been violated is inscribed on the body of those the apparatus is used on. The Condemned Man will have “Honour your superiors” inscribed on him.
The Traveller looks over at the man and asks if he knows, and the Officer replies that he does not. He does not even know he has been condemned. The Traveller asks if the man knows how his defense was received, and the Officer says he did not have an opportunity to defend himself. The Traveller is perturbed and the Officer sees that he will have to explain more about the apparatus and its function.
Here in the penal colony, the Officer explains, “Guilt is always beyond a doubt,” (5) and there is no point in going through the motions of hearing the Condemned Man’s lies. The Condemned Man was supposed to stand outside a captain’s door and stand up every hour when the clock strikes and salute, but was found asleep once when the clock struck in the middle of the night. The Captain reported this and the man was condemned to the apparatus.
The Traveller is not satisfied by this explanation, but he remains quiet. He thinks perhaps the New Commandant is initiating changes. The Officer proceeds with his explanation and states that when the Condemned Man is on the Bed it will start to quiver and the Harrow willl sink into his body. The inscription will be made by the needles poking in and out of the Condemned Man's back, and people will be able to watch the process through the glass of the Harrow. There are two needles on the Harrow; the long one inscribes and the short one shoots water to wash away the blood. The blood flows into the pit beside the apparatus.
The Traveller is horrified to see the curious and confused Condemned Man inspecting the apparatus as well, running his eyes over the glass. Seeing the Traveller’s expression, the Officer throws a clump of dirt at the dozing Soldier, who jerks awake and restrains the Condemned Man.
The Officer states that now the Traveller knows everything, but that he will show him the diagrams. The Traveller cannot touch them, as they are his most precious possessions, but he can see them. The Traveller looks but cannot comprehend; all is labyrinthine, crisscrossing lines. He comments that the diagram is elaborate and he cannot decipher it.
The Officer smiles and says that it isn’t “calligraphy for school children” (7). The machine works over twelve hours. The script has many embellishments, and beyond the sentence, the rest of the apparatus' work consists of inscribing decoration.
He jumps up and turns it on. Everything begins to move. It squeaks, which unfortunately takes away from its marvelousness. The Officer can tell something is off and jumps to fix it. He explains that the body of the Condemned Man will be turned around slowly to give the Harrow a new space on which to write. The body will feel pain only for the first six hours. After two hours, the man will stop screaming. He can eat rice pudding if he wants; the Officer says that they always do, but they stop eating after six hours. At that point, the man will become quiet and begin to understand. He will figure out the inscription being made on his body. It takes six hours to fully achieve this understanding, and then he will die and be tossed by the apparatus into the pit. Finally, he will be quickly buried.
After the Officer concludes his explanation, he motions to the Soldier, who cuts off the Condemned Man’s clothes. He puts the man in place on the Bed. The Officer watches the Traveller’s face now that he knows how the apparatus works.
The strap on the Condemned Man’s wrist breaks. The Officer explains that the machine is complicated and sometimes something breaks. Their resources are limited by the New Commandant because he has been trying to fight the Old Commandant’s ways by making the process of getting new parts laborious.
Watching all this, the Traveller thinks to himself that it is “always questionable to intervene decisively in strange circumstances” (9). He is a foreigner and is only there to observe things, though he feels very clearly the injustice and inhumanity of this process. However, his very invitation by the New Commandant to watch the apparatus be used indicates that they want his opinion, and perhaps knew it would be negative.
Suddenly the Officer cries out in disgust. The Condemned Man has vomited when the dirty stub of felt was put into his mouth, and the Officer is angry that his machine is now messy. He wishes the Commandant would listen to him and get a new piece of felt.
The Soldier cleans up the apparatus and the Condemned Man is quiet. The Officer feels a premonition and calls the Traveller aside to tell him something in confidence.
Analysis
“In the Penal Colony” is disturbing from the moment it begins. The flat indifference of the authorial tone, the fact that the characters have no names but are referred to by a label that indicates only their generic legal position, and the discussion of a mysterious “apparatus” all serve to create an immediate feeling of unease. The story is considered one of Kafka’s best for its enigmatic nature, unsettling tone, and layers of meaning. It has inspired a multitude of critical interpretations over the decades since its publication in English; this guide will cover some of the most important ones.
The first interpretation to consider is that the story is a religious allegory. Even within this larger category, there are variations to consider. One version is that the penal colony represents a society that follows an authoritarian God. According to this theory, Kafka is not writing about one specific religious tradition; rather, it is more general, referring to all religions that focus on rites, decrees, and transcendence. The Old Order is, as critic Gerhard Brand writes, “revoltingly sadistic, but, according to the officer’s testimony, it does offer humankind redemption through an agonizing ritual of pain.” The apparatus, the sentence, and the spectacle of the punishment are certainly like religious rituals: the Bed is like an altar, the diagrams are Scripture of a sort, the people watching are fellow believers. The Traveller represents the New Order, which in its secularism appears more humane and sentimental but also “lacks the strength of conviction to confront the practices of the Old Order directly” and is “slack, shallow, and worldly.” Even though the New Order eventually triumphs when the apparatus breaks down, it is a Pyrrhic victory.
Critic Doreen Fowler sees the story in more or less the same way, but suggests that the old order specifically represents the Old Testament. In the Hebraic tradition, human sinfulness and guilt are unquestioned; as the Officer himself states, there is no question of the Condemned Man’s guilt. Sin can only be absolved and guilt obviated through the apparatus. The Old Commandant created the penal colony and the apparatus just as the Old Testament God created the world. The story thus suggests “the world, like the torture machine, was created to induce the suffering necessary for the expiation of human guilt.” The new order may seem like it is from a more Hellenistic tradition, but Fowler notes the commonalities with the New Testament. The Officer laments the loss of real authority and strength in the New following the Old.
There are other aspects of the story that contribute to the religious allegory. The Officer has elements of a prophet, and the Officer’s eventual suicide can be an allusion to the martyrdom of Christ, a key part of the New Testament theology. However, as Fowler explains, there is a bit of deviance from an exact allegorical adherence. She writes that unlike in the New Testament where Christ died to release humanity from bondage to its original sin, “In the Penal Colony” changes it to mean that “Christ died for the opposite reason—in affirmation of man’s guilt and the necessity of suffering for that guilt.” Kafka thus inverts the New Testament understanding of Christ as originator of a new law of love and forgiveness and makes him the last gasp of an old order that requires suffering to atone for human guilt. If there is a second coming, Kafka sees it as one that “will not bring the return of a resurrected, loving redeemer, but the return of a harsh and unforgiving system of justice.”
Other critics have pointed out parallels to Judaism, Kafka's own faith. The Officer’s reverence for the diagrams is suggestive of the Torah (the sacred text of Judaism), and the writing of the script on the body suggests the Talmud. Erwin Steinberg acknowledges that the inscriptions for both the Condemned Man and the Officer are suggestive of stern, Old Testament decrees. He sees much more of the Old Testament at play than the New, writing that Kafka “responds only to the sense of guilt and cannot ascend to the sense of joy and of divine love and mercy. Although in this story the Condemned Man is in fact reprieved, another [man] is condemned and dies; and the story ends in anxious flight…each man suffers without redemption for his sins and wanders perpetually in the wilderness himself.” Steinberg suggests the religious allegory in “In the Penal Colony” is not one about the transition between the Old and New Testaments, but of Orthodox Judaism and Reform Judaism. In the former, the Old Commandant stands in for the orthodox Jewish God and is “strict, masculine, demanding rigid adherence to tradition, imposing strict justice.” The New Commandant is hostile to the old ways, makes religion more available to women, and espouses more humane rituals, as Reform Judaism did for Jewish practice.
