HORROR MONTH #22: In the Penal Colony, by Franz Kafka (1919)

Type of Media: Short Story

If you've done much traveling in your life, you've probably been somewhere with customs you don't agree with. Maybe the locals eat a certain food you find reprehensible, or look down on certain groups of people, but whatever it was chances are you just accepted it. After all you're a guest in their culture, and it's not your place to question how they run their society. But what if you went somewhere and saw a custom that was truly abhorrent? Would you say anything? Would you do anything?

In In the Penal Colony, Czechoslovak writer Franz Kafka presents a character with just such a situation. A European Traveler visits an island penal colony, where the Officer in charge shows him a machine that executes prisoners by etching the law they broke into their skin over a twelve hour period using dozens of needles, before dumping them into a pit filled with their own blood and burying them. The Officer then demonstrates the machine on a Condemned Man, who has been given no trial or sentence and doesn't even understand what's going on.

While talking to the Traveler, the Officer speaks highly of the island's old Commandant, who designed the machine and the judicial process of the island. The accused are presumed guilty and the Officer is the only person involved in the sentencing, as involving other people might slow down the inevitable march toward execution. The old Commandant left such a bureaucratic tangle that it will apparently take years to change the judicial process, however the island's new Commandant is intent on getting rid of the machine, and the Officer tries to enlist the Traveler's help to keep it.

The Officer is a true believer in the old Commandant's ways, and thinks they're so logical that anyone who doesn't agree with them is foolish. He speaks of how delightful the executions used to be: all-day affairs with huge public gatherings, all watching the condemned go through an almost mystical experience. The Officer seems almost jealous of those being executed, as he believes that the machine's etching of the law allowed the condemned to literally feel the law and understand it better than any normal person could comprehend. It calls into question what purpose justice even serves. Are the sometimes harsh sentences we give to criminals meant to teach them a lesson, or are they more spectacle for the innocent?

On the other side, the Traveler thinks the whole process is awful but doesn't want to say anything to disparage the island's culture. He only speaks his mind when the Officer directly asks him to help. He won't directly participate, but he's unwilling to stop a torture and execution that is, to him, unjust. He is a good man who does nothing when he sees evil.

Kafka specializes in stories that are nightmarish, yet still very relatable, often about senseless and complex bureaucracies. They are also usually quite vague in their intent, allowing people to draw a lot of varying conclusions in terms of what they mean. If you want a short story that you can turn over in your head for a few days, give In the Penal Colony a read and check out Kafka's other stories, particularly The Metamorphosis.