In the Penal Colony
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"In the Penal Colony" (original title In der Strafkolonie) is a short story in German by Franz Kafka. It is set in an unnamed penal colony.
In the Penal Colony is a story about the last use of an elaborate torture and execution device, that carves the sentence of the man on his skin in a flouring script before letting him die, all over the course of twelve hours.
The story has only four characters, who are named only according to their role in the story. The Officer is the machine's operator, the Condemned is a man scheduled for execution, the Soldier is responsible for guarding the Condemned, and the Traveler is a European dignitary and visitor.
The story is told from the point of view of the Traveler, who--like the reader--is encountering this brutal machine for the first time. Everything about the machine and its purpose is told to him by the Officer while the Soldier and the Condemned placidly watch nearby. The Officer especially tells of the religious epiphany the executed experience in their last six hours in the machine.
Eventually it becomes clear that the use of the machine, and its associated process of justice where the accused is always instantly found guilty, has fallen out of favor with the current Commandant. The Officer is the last exhort of the machine, and strongly believes in the machine's form of justice.
The Officer makes a plea to the man for him to speak to the current Commandent on behalf of the machine's continued use. When the Traveler refuses to do so, and instead says that he will speak against it, the Officer realizes that this will be the machine's last use. He frees the Condemned and sets up the machine for himself, with the words "Be Just" to be written on him.
However the machine, in heavy disrepair, malfunctions, and instead of its usual elegant operation it simply stabs and kills the Officer quickly.
As in other of Kafka's writings, the narrator is detached from, or perhaps numbed by, events that one would normally expect to be registered with horror.
The story was loosely translated to film in 1999 (as Zoetrope [link]) and was made into an opera by Philip Glass in 2000. [link]
Relevant Links
[A public-domain English translation of the story] This should be listed under the novella section.
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