Kafka's short story In The Penal Colony is an interesting one. The story describes what happens between the explorer and the officer as the officer demonstrates his machine, for which he has so much feeling. Unlike Metamorphosis, In The Penal Colony arouses contradictory responses in the reader. In Metamorphosis there is only one response, which is to say shock and horror with regard to Gregor's condition, and sympathy for him as a result of that horror. In Penal Colony, by contrast, we must balance horror at what the officer is describing with sympathy for the difficult position he is in. It is thus a much more difficult story to deal with.

We learn from the officer's version of events that he is involved in what seems very much like a political battle with the new Commandant. The officer resembles more than anything the person in any job who has been there since the time of the previous manager and constantly complains about the new one.

The struggle also resembles to my mind the battle between traditional and liberal forces which so often features in politics. The new Commandant stands as a liberal reformer. The truth about political reform of whatever kind, as I am sure Kafka felt, is that sometimes all it can do is hurt a different set of people. Politics is inherently cruel, being composed of decisions which randomly affect and harm people. Some of them are fairer than others, but all of them wound. Kafka, remember, wrote that every revolution carried in its wake "the slime of a new bureaucracy".

One relevant question hangs over the new Commandant's behaviour. If he is truly the commandant of the colony, then surely he can order the harrow to be destroyed, just as his predecessor brought it into existence. No reason is given as to why he does not do this. The most obvious explanation is that he uses it as a way of making himself look good. The officer then appears somehow responsible for the continued method of punishment, punishment which in terms of discipline the commandant no doubt finds convenient. In consequence of this the action of the officer at the end is significant for the new Commandant: the latter will have to instigate some form of discipline himself. By destroying himself as well as the machine the officer has undermined his commandant's position, and also atoned for the injustice inherent in what he has done. A cleverer move he could not have chosen, even though he follows this route as though it were a last resort.

So what does the story have to say about punishment, an issue on which I believe one could say it touches? The issue of punishment in literature is complex. From an aesthetic point of view punishment is ugly and not completely satisfying. In his analysis of tragedy Aristotle argues that the punishment of an evil man is unappealing as is the punishment of a good man. (What he proposes is the downfall of a man who is mainly good, but with one major failing or missing of the mark.)

The reason why punishment does not really work in stories - hence the term 'poetic justice' - is that there is something inherently unappealing in the notion of punishment. Having power over somebody to harm them and using it, purely because you are justified in doing so, is alienating to the part of us that enjoys works of art, which remind us of our humanity. In Hamlet the main character must take revenge, but has qualms about the nature of revenge (more or less), and can only do anything, ultimately, when circumstances reveal to him something definite about which he can take revenge. Art is about the personal story rather than the official one.

In the case of Penal Colony the story is about punishment, but there is no punishment actually carried out in it. The prisoner is spared and the man who goes on the harrow does so willingly. Interestingly, as happens with great frequency in Kafka, people choose to suffer for what they have done of their own accord. The explorer, who was not planning to stay for long, leaves the island early. He has no reason to stay in any case.

His departure from the colony gives rise to an interesting incident. The soldier and the condemned man follow him down to the jetty, where the boat is waiting. They want to join them, but he threatens them with a piece of knotted rope "and so prevented them from attempting the leap." What we see in that last moment is what punishment should be about, namely deterring people from doing things they shouldn't do. This is different from the attitude embodied by the officer, who worships his tool of punishment. By this means the story implies that focussing on the actual mode of punishment is misplaced.

"Guilt is never to be doubted," explains the officer, and in so doing distinguishes his story sharply from The Trial. In The Trial Joseph K.'s guilt is completely and utterly a matter of doubt, and the question of whether the executioners constitute his punishment is uncertain. This story, by contrast, is about punishment and not trial. We could say that the fact that guilt is never to be doubted is a merciful release, on the grounds that the prisoner is at least freed of one form of torment. He will not be punished by his conscience.

The ending of the story throws up a curious point about the structure of Kafka's stories, particularly with regard to their endings. In general Kafka's stories finish by stretching into infinity. Often, like The Judgement, they conclude with a seemingly endless moment. But in the endings of Metamorphosis and Penal Colony we see something else of Kafka's writing. At the end of Penal Colony the explorer waves a piece of knotted rope, and prevents a leap. At the end of Metamorphosis Grete Samsa leaps from the seat and stretches her young body. The ideas of leaping, waving and stretching occur more than a little in Kafka. In the Sortini episode in The Castle Sortini is first seen stretching and yawning because he finds fire brigade celebrations tedious; when he sees Amalia he leaps across the shaft; but then he waves her family away. When K. is shown the photograph of the messenger by the Bridge Inn landlady, he thinks that the young man is stretching, but the landlady assures him that the man is in fact leaping. He could be waving.

Interestingly, where Metamorphosis finishes with a leap and a stretch that support each other, the finish of Penal Colony comprises a wave which is in opposition to a frustrated leap.

In some ways this story has been taken as describing the way that Kafka's writing works. In fact it has been interpreted in many ways. It seems so rich in terms of interpretation, although all the interpretable elements within it obstinately take their own directions rather then the ones one hopes they will take.

Certain aspects of the story open themselves to such treatment. We are all familiar with the incident in which the officer like a demented programmer tries to get the explorer to read the Old Commandant's plans for the harrow, three times, and the explorer cannot make sense of them. This resembles, so it has been felt, the experience of readers attempting to make sense of Kafka's apparently symbolic or significant writings and failing. While there is a degree of parallelism in that instance, there is more similarity in aspects of the story that are less obviously about writing.

The officer's descriptions of the correct operation of the harrow include reference to a point about halfway through the execution when enlightenment, like satori, breaks through on the face of the condemned man. This would be at the sixth hour. It begins about the eyes. From this moment it spreads, and all watching are affected by its radiance. The officer is quite clear that executions always followed this pattern.

Something similar can be seen in Kafka's stories. Many of them follow such a pattern. Each one is about a kind of endurance for a particular individual. Gradually in this individual a kind of enlightenment with regard to the terrible ordeal he is undergoing makes itself clear. Perhaps he begins to discern in what way his suffering is showing him the extent to which he is making things worse for himself.

Set up 24 March 1999

Last updated 26 March 1999

© R. Millar 1999