YuHeng's blog

In Franz Kafka’s short story, “In the Penal Colony,” the life of a condemned man falls upon the hands of an officer. The officer, who is in charge of the execution machine, explains its function to a traveller, who later learns that the condemned man is actually not aware of his sentence. As a stranger, he has no right to confer his opinions. A fundamental impulse, however, compels him to resist against the sentence. To him, the condemned man is just “a stranger” (Kafka 162). And to the condemned man, the traveller is also a stranger. They are both strangers to each other. But the notion of responsibility isn’t negated.

The condemned man first appears as a criminal. There is no reason for the traveller to concern himself with him. However, when the traveller learns that the condemned man is condemned upon an injustice, he no longer exists as a criminal. Rather the traveller perceives his own sense of freedom through the awareness and conscious of the condemned man, whereby the threat against freedom becomes apparent. Indeed, the condemned man does not know that he is condemned, but the traveller knows, and the criminal can now only appear as an unjustly condemned man to him, who subsequently, becomes the traveller’s notion of solidarity—that is, the measure of freedom. In fact, it is not even the condemned man who the traveller identifies with, but his conscious that allows the traveller to have his own sense of injustice. So, the condemned man could be waiting in the corner for his sentence, but the traveller would feel an impulse to oppose against the officer, realizing that he could be as easily condemned as the condemned man. However, if he becomes a measure of freedom for the traveller, it is upon the basis that he is performing the role of the condemned man, who is condemned insofar as he is powerless against the officer. The traveller then must now conceive the sense of freedom through the notion of power, whereby both his freedom and that of the condemned man fall upon the hands of the officer.

The institutionalization of power in the penal colony presents a role for every individual–the condemned man, the soldier, and the officer. However, within these roles demanded by the system, there is an underlying prejudice that turns into a disproportionate division of morals and responsibility. Here, I do not mean the problem of morals and responsibility within the system but when the issue inflicts itself upon others who are not part of the system. For instance, what is the soldier, who has the duty to watch over the condemned man, supposed to do? When the officer has killed himself in the end, freeing the condemned man, the soldier runs off with him as if nothing has happened. All of a sudden, he is not a soldier when a moment ago, he was a member of the penal colony. In other words, the soldier is not part of the system anymore. Should we say that he is irresponsible? But this judgement results from the institution itself. When it crumbles, the roles of people crumble. The soldier is no longer a soldier. But are they responsible for simply abandoning what they should abandon, given that they are no longer part of the responsibilities which their roles assume? This is the predicament that the traveller faces; he must at once be a stranger who is only there to speculate, and “not at all to meddle in foreign notions of justice” (Kafka 162), and a stranger who realizes the injustice of the officer but cannot measure any judgement against it. Within the system, people have become tools, where someone has undergone the process that represents the officer’s authority, and within this process there is no distinction that delineates how we could perceive him otherwise. Hence, there is no other reasons for people to be treated or perceived differently. The traveller, however, is at once within and without the system. The mass of power finds itself upon the powerless—that is, the lack of. The traveller is powerless but also a stranger. The notion of power does not apply to him who in other words, is one of the oppressed but without an oppressor. The traveller receives “letters from higher officials” (Kafka 162) to witness the execution. But that is independent from his predicament—it is only an invitation to his current situation. The predicament in which he finds himself is the result of a choice which he has to respond as a consequence of the hierarchical structure. However, it is exactly the position that traveller is in that the officer begins to show how easily it could be reverted. And when it does, the result is not zero, for it is the process by which the traveller realizes his freedom and the notion of responsibility.  

The officer wants someone to acknowledge the injustice of his ideals and methods of torture. But the possibility of that happening ends when after an elaborate explanation, the traveller rejects the officer—during which he suddenly demands the soldier to free the condemned man and latches himself against the machine to kill himself. The inversion of roles, however, between the officer and the condemned man is not something that happens after the traveller has denied the officer; instead, it has happened since the beginning when it is not the condemned man who wishes to escape–for he does not even know he is sentenced–but the officer himself. He tries to elude the fact that no one—not even the current commandant—approves of his methods, which is why he fervently explains himself to the traveller. And it is in his choices that the officer does not only elude himself, but with his final choice to commit suicide, he forsakes his own existence.

When it comes to his last choice, the officer isn’t limited to the choice of suicide. But when he has chosen it, the decision predates all his other choices, for this decision leads his actions along the way to committing suicide, meaning that if suicide gives him no other options to choose from after—since he will be dead—all his actions leading up to it will not permit any other choices. Otherwise, it would be absurd and not be a decision at all. The decision to commit suicide in itself limits him from other choices and thereby denies his existence. Hence, his decision is one without opposition. Nevertheless, if one argues that the officer has decided to die so as to resurrect with the old commandant who had approved of his ideals, and who upon his gravestone wrote, “the commandant will rise again, and from these premises here, lead his followers on to the reconquest of the colony” (Kafka 180), then the choice of the officer still predates the choice of death against all others. In fact, when the machine breaks down as he commits suicide, instead of a “torture of the kind the officer [had wanted] to achieve” (Kafka 178) it had become a “crude murder” (Kafka 178). In other words, the machine had quickened the process, highlighting the idea that his own choice has denied his existence. As a result, he remains as an officer and dies as an officer, who is never freed from his duties of the penal colony. And even if he had resisted his role, he couldn’t have been anyone else because there is no one else left for him to be.

Is the traveller the cause of the officer’s choice then? No, because the officer merely identifies himself with the conscious of the traveller that his ideals have failed, whereby he realizes his own resolve and solidarity—that is, death by the machine. The traveller becomes the source of identification for the officer. What is the notion of stranger then?

The traveller first appears as a stranger, but he is only a stranger insofar as he remains a spectator, someone denied by the penal colony. On the other hand, the execution machine is a judicial procedure and part of the officer that projects his ideals, of which no one approves. It is a machine that no one can sympathize with, whether it’s someone part of the penal colony or not. The stranger then is not the traveller, but the machine that is ever more alienated. Like the traveller who perceives his own notion of freedom through the condemned man, the stranger is someone—or something—that another can connect and relate.

At last, the traveller realizes his sense of responsibility through the simple fact that if he had been a traveller, he would have been in the penal colony only to speculate. But by simply saying “no” to the officer, the traveller ceases to be a traveller. By abandoning himself, it’s the only reason why he can assert any freedom. It is a small act, but it encompasses everything, and it is enough to break down the structure of the system. The prisoner is everyone, but freedom falls only upon the hands of the traveller. The officer simply resorts to suicide, and the soldier and the condemned man both remain unchanged. Freedom is a contingent of many things but to exercise it fully it must be connected to what denies it—that is, the role of being a traveller.