In the Penal Colony is a story about moral beliefs and sticking with those beliefs right to the end, even if that means sacrificing your own life.
Franz Kafka's story begins with the officer of the penal colony giving an explanation and demonstration on how to operate his complex execution machine.
This demonstration is held for a traveller who is there purely to observe the colony's execution methods. The officer tries to convince the traveller that his way of doing things is justice.
This particular story out of Kafka's collection was based on a metaphor that stood for one of the main characters - the officer.
The device reflected not only the cruel, almost medieval methods of the past, it also reflected the beliefs and morals of the officer.
The device is as much a part of the officer as his own flesh and blood appearance in the book.
Even such details as the grating of the wheel and the breaking of the straps have a deeper meaning than just the fact that they happen in the story.
It symbolises the fact that this horrible machine is a thing of the past, that the more modern, more humane way of doing things is taking over the officer and his methods of punishment.
All the characteristics of the officer have been captured in this one device.
Throughout the story Kafka makes you feel as if you are the one the officer is ranting on to, and the story becomes more intense as you feel it is becoming your choice as to what becomes of the officer and his device.
There are many ways to indicate the audience as being the main character in In the Penal Colony, but Kafka has wrapped us up in this situation with such subtlety that we have to read this story twice over so we can begin to unravel just how clever it really is.
I felt I knew what his choice would be and I felt that I was personally listening to the plea of a man who was being swept along by modern morals and that couldn't survive when his idea of a fair society was being crushed under the foot of a new generation.
The gruelling end, where the officer is killed by his own crumbling machine, is poetic.
Although it is gruesome, we are left again with this grand Victorian passion, the idea that you must pour your heart and soul into whatever you do; this idea that was still recognised even when the Victorian age was drawing to a close.
This bloody, gory end finally opened my eyes to just how much the officer poured into the device and his loyalty to the old commander.
The fact that he would rather die than watch what he built be destroyed, the fact his machine crumbled to pieces in his horrendous death, simulated the final pull on this idea of execution.
This wasn't just a story. Kafka was commenting on the coming of the new age, a tide against execution.
Kafka has a unique and very horrible way of looking at the world.
I think I always knew how In the Penal Colony would end.
There was really only one way it could, but it still comes as a shock to the senses.
This was perhaps the most meaningful of his horrible tales.
ByJames McCulloch, Year 11, Waitaki Boys' High School
