Brain Pain discussion

This discussion covers the story, In the Penal Colony.


Getting water-boarded at Guantanamo sounds like a walk in the park compared to the Penal Colony’s “apparatus”…

While visiting the Penal Colony, an explorer from another country has been invited to witness the execution of a condemned soldier. The officer in charge of the execution apparatus is more than a little proud of his well-designed machine, as well as his version of speedy justice. The big question is whether or not the foreign explorer is willing to get on board with the ‘adherents’ of the status quo.

Henry wrote: "This is a rather disturbing story. The pride and joy the officer takes in describing the apparatus is actually more disturbing than what happens next. A very subtle terror emanates from the pages."

A pretty demented man for sure. What did you think about the idea of "writing" the crime on the body. I'm not sure how to begin to analyze that. In fact, the whole story has so much to analyze, I don't know where to begin. Where's Zad?

This is my least favorite Kafka story. It seems a little too "on the nose," lacking that disturbing ambiguity that is his signature. I have not re-read it yet, so who knows, maybe I will discover something I missed before, as I did with "The Judgement," which I'm still not finished commenting on, but I haven't worked out what I want to say/ask.

Gregsamsa wrote: "This is my least favorite Kafka story. It seems a little too "on the nose," lacking that disturbing ambiguity that is his signature. I have not re-read it yet, so who knows, maybe I will discover..."

I can see that. For this story, though, I'm not sure how he could have "Kafka-fied" it. This is a horror story almost entirely based on the officer's ideas, obsessions, and actions. At the end, when the officer puts himself on the apparatus, rather than witness it's retirement, it almost seems like a natural thing for him to do. I wasn't completely expecting it, but on reflection, it makes sense. At first I imagined the officer was going to off the explorer, and the explorer was sort of imagining a similar scenario, but by having the officer commit suicide that way is in keeping with his displayed insanity.

There's a lot of political commentary going on in this one that is not, as you note, ambiguous!

I just did my reread. I may not have a cogent theory. Right now I'll say that I like the story mainly for its particulars, and I'll throw out some reflections.

The skeleton of the story is easily communicated as: a fanatic is the last believer in an extreme and idealistic system of justice, which tortured the condemned to death while symbolically making his sin into his punishment. It also "redeemed" the sinner, as the punishment has an enlightening and purgatory effect... or at least it is supposed to. When the fanatic learns that there is no one to support his ideal any longer, and his religion (we might as well call it that) is about to die, he attempts to prove the justice of his ways by martyring himself upon his own device. In a somewhat odd conclusion, the machine fails to carry out the full process, but in seeming random disorder murders him quickly without affecting his mind/soul.

This is quite interesting in itself. But on top of it we have the particulars which color our perception of events. I was certainly entertained, as always, but some of the peculiarities. I thought the constant reference to the "ladies" and the officer's jealous scrabbling for power against the New Commandant both funny and strange. The fact that the condemned man is more of a buffoon and a pathetic object is also notable, and the fact that he and the soldier are pretty much a pair of clowns together... it's rather arbitrary which one of them would play the role of condemned and which the soldier. Both tend to fall asleep on the job, both are uncomprehending. The detail about the rice pap, and the way the soldier and condemned compete for it is another surprising and semi-comic element.

We've got the implied horror of the contraption and the brutal torture. We have the knowledge that the judicial process is (apparently) unjust because it does not allow for a defense. But we don't have a particularly sympathetic or pitiable victim. The explorer has no particular concern for this condemned man, and neither do we (as he's more stupid and animal-like than he is noble or human). The objection is to the ideal, not the specific instance or application. We would not like to die on this machine.

The end seems enigmatic to me. Perhaps unsolvable. The officer basically asked the machine to punish him for being unjust, if in fact he was unjust, but the machine doesn't do it. So, does this mean that he was not unjust? Is this a vindication? Yet he did not get the enlightenment and absolution of sins that he seemed to want to experience, so his death becomes an emblem of total empty, arbitrary, meaningless death. So was he then, actually unjust, and so he is punished unjustly? (Repeat: If an unjust man is punished unjustly, then is this justice?)

Really, what is this brilliant machine telling us, when it flies to pieces and commits suicide along with the man?

One more riddle to ponder. Why is there such mystery involved in the branding of the sin upon the sinner? The writing is so obscure, that in fact it may not say what it is supposed to say. No one can read it with the eyes, and only the fanatic believed that one can read it upon one's own body through the experience of torture. What is the actual experience of an executed criminal? Is there real enlightenment there?

Can the fanatic have been right? We've been brought to surprising sympathy with him in the end, and with the deceased Old Commandant who has promised that his religion (again, why not call it that) will rise again.

Ah, coming back to an earlier point. The sin and the punishment are (symbolically) one. An idea which has been given expression by Dante and others. But is this sameness only symbolic (and maybe even less than that)? In the obscurity of the impressions upon their bodies, which are functionally unreadable, the punishment of every sinner appears from the outside to be exactly the same. Even if the words were completely legible, one could fairly ask "what's the difference whether they pierce an adulterer with the words 'don't steal' and an idolator with the words 'obey your parents'? They fundamentally die the same way!" To what degree do we come away with that as a message?

Henry wrote: "Henry Martin (HenryMartin) | 28 comments Jim,

I do not see this one as a horror piece (sorry, I feel like the dissenting opinion here, again).

While the idea itself is fairly horrific, the story is not as much about the violence the apparatus can inflict, it is about the human who is capable of inflicting it. The officer and his machine are one idea, tied together. One does not have any purpose without the other, but together, they are the penal system. The officer is the judge, jury, and the executioner, and the apparatus serves as his gavel..."

No, we're in agreement. The officer is the horror, not the execution.

I'm glad you mentioned the Old Commandant...even his burial place is hidden, very weird. And for some odd reason, this story reminds me of a statement of Winston Churchill's: "The Germans [I know, I know; Kafka was a semi-assimilated Jew/Czech] are the most loyal, and the most unfortunate, people in Europe."
I think the story is saying a lot about the folly of authority...and loyalty.

Jim: I've been thinking about your question about "kafkaizing" this story, and I imagine: eager condemned penitents, puzzling the explorer with their giddy enthusiasm: "I did something wrong, I know, but without The Punishment, my body does not say this! Look, like yours, it says nothing."

While the operator of the flesh-inscription device is repulsed by the work, his career a living hell: "It's all just gore, really. The difference between the page and the red is what makes it words, but it's only what it was before, except damaged, and since when are words themselves meaning? Even if you could read it; it could be nonsense. It could be an advertisement. It's still just skin and blood. But they come. Look! Long lines of them! Bribery and nepotism corrupting our system so that they may escape lighter sentences, so that they may be inscribed."

Sorry, that's all I got. Still a little too obvious. Just now typing that, I wondered if in German the term "sentence" would pun as it does here in English.

See, you guys have had me thinking for a couple of days about a writing project that I should not do, because it will eat more of my time and distract me from other things. But I really want to write a "dekafkaized" version of this so that--by comparison--it would reveal exactly why this is a story as only Kafka could have told it. I think it's being insufficiently credited.

Meanwhile, would anyone else like to say whether they ever sympathized with or respected the officer? Does his idealism ennoble him?

More questions:

Since I'm somewhat obsessed with Kafka's reversals, what did you think of the reversals here.

The explorer, for instance, begins with the assumption that his visit is a mere formality, he's a bit bored with the very idea of it, and he supposes that even if he were to have an opinion of events, his opinion would carry no weight. He's an uninvolved outsider. But by the end it is his judgment and his judgment alone which will decide the outcome for the accused, the continuation or termination of the punitive program, and basically the life or death of an entire system of faith. Ironically, had the officer remained mute and not tried to appeal to the explorer, the execution would have gone ahead as planned, and the status quo, though precarious, would likely be maintained. His appeal, based on a misapprehension, brings about his doom. Yet the explorer who dooms the man, the machine, the faith, leaves with possible remorse for bringing the noble officer to an ignoble end.

Second, simpler and more comic in its execution, there's the reversal when the officer places himself upon the machine, and the previously noisy gear starts to operate completely silently and smoothly, almost as a signal that all is right with the universe, and this is ending exactly as it was meant to. Only then does the machine start to fly to pieces and cast extreme doubt upon the rightness of everything... and the machine happens to fly apart in a bizarrely deliberate manner!

Now, I've just come across an article which I've read, and I don't really agree with it's conclusions, but it's an interesting read nonetheless. It's an academic paper arguing that In The Penal Colony should not be taught (particularly in English). The author's basic premise is: students are not equipped to appreciate this story, and the translators could not effectively translate the essential nuances of the original. But really I see this the cry of a fanatic I get it, and nobody else can get it; we will not share the mystery with the unwashed! Fool translators, how could you say "radiate" when you should have said "spread," how could you say he's submissive like a dog when you should have said that he has dog-devotion!? Raaaaahhh! But it's a good article for another perspective, it spells out more bluntly what some of the story's themes are, and it touches on translation issues.

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Has anyone noticed that female figures are mighty scarce in Kafka? And while he dwells a lot on his tormented relationship with his father, never a word about his mother.

Women will arrive in a few of Kafka's other works but... you'll pretty much get mother figures, sister figures, objects of desire, and enigmas. Most tales center on a main, male protagonist, and other figures are defined by their relationships to the protagonist, they may be foils, or part of the environment. Sorry, but that's what to expect from Kafka.

Jim wrote: "Henry wrote: "This is a rather disturbing story. The pride and joy the officer takes in describing the apparatus is actually more disturbing than what happens next. A very subtle terror emanates fr..."

Kafka repeatedly does this, that our guilt imprints not only our being but the very fibre of our skin. In "Metamorphosis" the Oedipal guilt transforms human guilt into the armoured hide of a cockroach. Then the father throws an apple at the cockroach son and it becomes embedded in his armour plated hide and the creature can never shake it clear - an apple, can't get more Garden of Eden/Oedipal than that!

Elizabeth wrote: "Has anyone noticed that female figures are mighty scarce in Kafka? And while he dwells a lot on his tormented relationship with his father, never a word about his mother."

the female figure in The Castle is beguiling and offers the character hope as well as luring him to doom alternately. If only the novel was preserved in its entirety to see how it would have turned out.

Zadignose wrote: "Women will arrive in a few of Kafka's other works but... you'll pretty much get mother figures, sister figures, objects of desire, and enigmas. Most tales center on a main, male protagonists, and ..."

hence the 'Letter To My Father'. He definitely had, um issues...

When we get to Metamorphosis, I may need to take up the issue of why not every apple is a biblical reference, and I recognize that I may be exactly the kind of stubborn student that the author of the article "don't teach the penal colony" is concerned with. For instance, while I don't doubt that religious metaphor is on display in Penal Colony, I don't think it's necessary to go so far as saying the rice pap equals the eucharist... or at least I would not like to view it only on that level.

That's one reason I don't like symbolic/metaphorical reading of texts, if it tends to imply a complete understanding once one gets that "aha" moment. So, @GregSamsa, I can relate to your discomfort with a Kafka tale that lends itself too easily to seeming only a parable. Yet I was still intrigued, I felt there remains some deep mystery here, and the principal one is how we should feel about the machine's answer in the end.

By the way @marc, I know you did not say that a reading as parable is complete... I'm just highlighting my perspective, if that makes sense.

Gregsamsa wrote: "Sorry, that's all I got. Still a little too obvious. Just now typing that, I wondered if in German the term "sentence" would pun as it does here in English..."

Just because I like having a chance to put my high school German to use, and because I have nothing else to add to this most excellent discussion, I will answer: 'no'. The word used in German is 'Urteil', which means judgment, it doesn't have the same double meaning as 'sentence' does in English.

Thank you Whitney!