The story “In the Penal Colony,” by Franz Kafka, examines the ways of a remote island colony where a unique and brutal form of justice is practiced. Designed by the previous and now deceased Commandant, this justice comes in the form of an elaborate machine which executes prisoners while it inscribes their sentence directly onto the body in a slow and torturous process. The execution is not used solely as a means of punishment but also as a form of public spectacle which we have seen countless times throughout our history.
The setting, only described as a brutal and miserable heat with little to no solace, is typical of Kafka making an already glum situation somehow worse and is left somewhat unspecified. However, with such elements as the “teahouse” and the “canechair”, or simply the colony aspect of the story, I’m pushed toward the NW European region for the origins of the colonizers.
There are many obvious objective views that the characters have against the machine, but one in particular has an affinity and a blind obedience to it. The man who operates the machine, The Officer seems to think that the victims of its punishment eventually come to see it as he does and embrace it. He feels that the process is some form of redemption and that people come around to it, that is also easy for someone to say when they are in no danger of coming to the business end of the apparatus and are one of those in power. This admiration toward the machine becomes the Officers downfall, as once the humanity and morality of its method is questioned by a traveler, he begins to question his own and it becomes too much to bear. He holds the values of the Colony so dear that when the discussion had come up about changing the machine he strips down his uniform which I think symbolizes either his detachment from it or his continued admiration and sends himself through the carnage that he had administered time and time over.
The dynamic of the characters, colonizers and colonized, is unfortunately no new concept. Especially in the context where northern Europeans have instilled totalitarian rule over a “less advanced” society, stripping their humanity and leaving them in fear and a feeling of inadequacy or worthlessness. Throughout history, there have been numerous examples of systems where condemned people did not have such basic opportunities and freedoms such as due process. In keeping within the region, medieval European feudal lords and the Monarchies had absolute power over their land and inhabitants, including the right to administer whatever wild form of justice without any type of legal proceedings. Any structure of power over people throughout history has always used cruel and unusual punishment for crimes against the state in order to show how much more they are capable of if you are so bold to step out of line. Overall, the motivation for denying due process often stems from a lust for more power, fear of losing it, and a public way to reduce another human to something less than man and kept in fear.
