In the Penal Colony


"In the Penal Colony" is a short story by Franz Kafka written in German in October 1914, revised in November 1918, and first published in October 1919.
The story is set in an unnamed penal colony. Internal clues and the setting on an island suggest Octave Mirbeau's The Torture Garden as an influence. As in some of Kafka's other writings, the narrator in this story seems detached from, or perhaps numbed by, events that one would normally expect to be registered with horror. "In the Penal Colony" describes the last use of an elaborate torture and execution device that carves the sentence of the condemned prisoner on his skin before letting him die, all in the course of twelve hours. As the plot unfolds, the reader learns more and more about the machine, including its origin and original justification.

Plot outline

Characters

There are only four characters, each named according to his role in the story. The Condemned is a man scheduled for execution, the Officer is in charge of the machine that will execute him, the Soldier is responsible for guarding the Condemned, and the Traveller is a European dignitary and visitor.

Synopsis

The story focuses on the Traveller, who is encountering the brutal machine for the first time. Everything about the machine and its purpose is told to him by the Officer. The Soldier and the Condemned, who is unaware that he has been sentenced to die, placidly watch from nearby. The Officer 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 the accused is always instantly found guilty, and the law he has broken is inscribed on his body as he slowly dies over a period of 12 hours has fallen out of favour with the current Commandant. The Officer is nostalgic regarding the torture machine and the values that were initially associated with it. As the last proponent of the machine, he strongly believes in its form of justice and the infallibility of the previous Commandant, who designed and built the device. In fact, the Officer carries its blueprints with him and is the only person who can properly decipher them; no one else is allowed to handle these documents.
The Officer begs the Traveller to speak to the current Commandant on behalf of the machine's continued use. The Traveller refuses to do so and says that he will not speak against it publicly, but will instead give his opinion to the Commandant privately and then leave before he can be called to give an official account. With this, the Officer frees the Condemned and sets up the machine for himself, with the words "Be Just" to be written on him. However, the machine malfunctions due to its advanced state of disrepair; instead of its usual elegant operation, it quickly stabs the Officer to death, denying him the mystical experience of the prisoners he had executed.
Accompanied by the Soldier and the Condemned, the Traveller makes his way to a tea house in which he is shown the grave of the old Commandant. Its stone is set so low that a table can easily be placed over it; the inscription states his followers' belief that he will rise from the dead someday and take control of the colony once more. As the Traveller prepares to leave by boat, he repels the efforts of the Soldier and Condemned to come aboard.

Adaptations

, in the liner notes of the Mothers of Invention album We're Only in It for the Money, recommends reading the short story before listening to the track "The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny."
Ian Curtis of the band Joy Division was inspired by "In the Penal Colony" to write the song "Colony" from the album Closer.
Ivan Klíma mentions in his novel Love and Garbage the first story by Kafka that he had ever read, which was a story of "...a traveler to whom an officer on some island wants to demonstrate, with love and dedication, his own bizarre execution machine." The narrator is very likely referring to "In the Penal Colony".
In the 2003 novel Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the antagonist Dolores Umbridge creates a magical object known as "The Black Quill". Similar to the machine used in Kafka's story, words would be inscribed on the subjects body through scarring when the quill was used. This was utilized as a punishment by having the students of Hogwarts write their cause for punishment with the quill repeatedly, causing immense pain and scarring.
The novel The Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe, follows the exploits of a member of a guild of torturers. At one point, when giving a tour of the facilities to a condemned prisoner, the head of the guild describes a device identical to the one presented in the short story.
The episodic video game Resident Evil Revelations 2 contains many references to Kafka. Along with being set within an island colony, the first episode is named "The Penal Colony" after the story, and a file found within the game contains an excerpt from "In the Penal Colony." There is even a room which has a torture device similar to the one described by Kafka with a deceased body under the needled machine.
In Haruki Murakami's novel Kafka on the Shore the protagonist, a boy who calls himself Kafka, admits that "In the Penal Colony" is his favorite of Franz Kafka's short stories. He imagines the machine as "a substitute for explaining the situation we're in."
The album Public Strain by Canadian rock band Women features the song "Penal Colony", which references Kafka's story.