Petar Tumbov / July 3, 2022 Franz Kafka was born on July 3rd, 1883. He was a German-speaking Jew from Prague who later lived a painful, miserable, and sad life. Franz Kafka possessed the particular capability of explaining the most ordinary emotions in an exceptionally grotesque, unordinary, and human way. His writing style, his way of articulation, and the philosophical questions he tries to answer are unique. Kafka’s writings are a literary dance between Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Dostoyevsky. However, in his stories and novels, they are hardly distinguishable. Kafka’s writings are generally focused on existentialism and nihilism, mostly derived from his family and love life, as well as his general mental struggles. Most of his writings are discreetly aimed at his father, Herman Kafka with whom he had a problematic relationship. Franz Kafka is mostly nowadays known for his letters to his lover, Felice Bauer. They were engaged two times, but Kafka backed out of the engagement both times. According to his biographer and friend Max Brod, his sexual desires were torturing him throughout his life (Brod, 1937). He died on the 3rd of June at age 40. On his deathbed, Kafka was editing his last story, the story about a hunger artist. According to Max Brod (1937), at his last moments, Kafka was unable to eat and died from starvation. Kafka himself was rarely satisfied with his writings; in fact, he was never satisfied. In his biography, Max Brod (1937) admitted that he did not listen to Kafka’s death wish and did not burn his work. Kafka never managed to finish any of his novels, therefore, Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle were published posthumously. Max Brod was not the only one who went against his wishes. Felice Bauer and Milena Jesenská, his other lover, were also instructed to burn everything he had written (Brod, 1937). Luckily for us, they ignored his wishes and kept most of his work untouched. Other than his letters to Felice Bauer and his novels, the readers are familiar also with his short stories. Just to mention a few of his most popular works, are The Metamorphosis, The Hunger Artist, The Judgment, In the Penal Colony, and A Country Doctor. Kafka’s writing is usually described as works of psychological realism and borderline fiction. For this essay, I will give an alternative political analysis to one of his most popular short stories, In the Penal Colony. The short story In the Penal Colony starts with a dialogue between an Officer and an Explorer. The real names of the characters are never revealed. The reader is left reading about four main characters, the Officer, the Traveler (or Explorer, depending on the translation), the Condemned man, and the Soldier. Two more characters are mentioned, the new and the old Commandant (Governor). The Officer is the one who leads the colony. He is the only judge, the leader, and the executioner. The Explorer is an outside person who came to witness the execution of the Condemned man on the order of the new Governor. A Condemned man and the Soldier are coming together and both of them are not speaking the language of the Officer. The Soldier is the one who is carrying the heavy chains with which the Condemned man is chined. The main focus of the story circles around the machine (or apparatus, depending on the translation), which is a big, old, and grotesque torturing device that engraves words into a person’s back as punishment. The process of engraving lasts twelve painful hours. The accusation on which the Condemned man got sentences is absurd at best. The Condemned man got caught sleeping on duty. His duty being even more absurd, to salute at his captain’s door every hour. Through dialogues between the Officer and the Explorer, the author Kafka explains to us the composition and purpose of the machine. After the lengthy explanations, the Condemned man is finally placed on the machine. Against the demand of the Officer, The Explorer testifies against this procedure in front of the new Governor. This causes the Officer, to claim that this procedure will be most certainly stopped and he frees the Condemned man. He strips himself naked and lays down on the machine instead. However, before that, for the last time, he changes the gears on the machine. Coming to a reason of his own, The Officer is willing to engrave on his back the words “Be Just!”. However, as soon as the procedure starts, the machine immediately malfunctions and instantly kills the Officer. Afterward, the Explorer together with the Soldier and the Condemned man go to the colony to visit the houses. What follows is a pretty unclear event. They enter the basement of one of the houses and search for a grave. The Soldier is the one who leads them to the tombstone, which is hidden under a table. The person lying under the grave is the old Commander, whom the Officer tried to dig up multiple times. Afterward, the Explorer leaves the room and heads towards a boat which he successfully boards. Immediately after, the Condemned man and the Soldier notice the missing Explorer and hurry toward him. However, he is already on the boat with a heavy rope asking them not to get closer. Kafka wrote this story in 1914, two months after World War I started. However, In the Penal Colony was not published until 1919. There are many ways to interpret this short story. Readers could notice Kafka’s mental struggles where the main emphasis falls on his father. His father is represented by the Officer’s character, and he, Franz Kafka, is the Condemned man. However, we could go even further and look at the political background of this story, because there is a socio-political explanation of this story that I will focus on. Let’s entertain the socio-political message as Kafka gives it both a metaphorical and literal meaning. There are clear signs of support as well as a harsh critique of Kafka’s contemporary political system. Right in the opening sentence of this short story, we stumble upon a rather interesting assumption by the narrator who can assume that this is a familiar machine to the Explorer. Kafka is intentionally letting us know that the Explorer had some previous knowledge and experience with the machine. And while he knows that its purpose is torture, we as the readers are unaware of it at this point. The torture machine could be seen as literal or metaphorical. It is a metaphor because it resembles the way calorizators inscribed their laws and traditions to the natives. The literal meaning pertains to the story being a critique of slavery and colonization. The lack of justice that is being served to the Condemned man shows that Kafka argued against the injustice of this kind. According to him, everyone should be able to protest and have a second chance, that’s why he kills the Officer with the words “Be Just”. On three different occasions, the Officer refers to the Explorer as someone who comes from western countries. The first information for his possible home we acquire around the middle of this story. The Officer is blaming the Explorer for having a “European prejudice”. However, we should divert our focus to the second time his possible homeland is mentioned. In a discussion about what will the old Governor do, the Officer assumed that he would say: “A great Occidental explorer, sent to investigate judicial procedure all over the world, has just said that our old traditional procedure is inhuman”. Immediately we could conclude that the Governor and the Officer are from the same land, however not on the same island. That would mean that the Explorer is neutral and comes from a different country where “Torture was used in the Middle Ages” and where “There are different punishments than capital punishment”. The other argument that supports this line of thought is that the Officer and the Explorer spoke the same language, French. However, the condemned man, the one who was judged, sentenced, and tortured by the Officer, did not understand the language. The Soldier couldn’t understand them either. These events and dialogues are telling us about a French-speaking westerner that visited a western colony on an island. Both, the person in charge of the colony and the visitor are the only ones who can speak French. By the statement that torture was being used in Explore’s country in the middle age, we could conclude that we are talking about one of the European countries. Therefore, Kafka’s opinion is that the rule of law is the most humane thing. In this regard, Kafka strongly sides with democracy and the rule of law While promoting the idea of democracy and rule of law, Kafka also acknowledges totalitarianism. There is a message on the grave found in the basement about the traditional, authoritative, and tyrannical system. The message is a claim made by the Governor: “There exists a prophecy that the Governor will rise again after a certain number of years and from this house will lead his followers to a re-conquest of the colony. Have faith and wait!”. Kafka sees democracy and the tyrannical authoritarian system as a never-ending struggle. The old system will eventually make its way back and will lead its followers to a re-conquest. As soon as the Explorer rads this message, he boards a boat immediately and wants to escape. He was so scared for his system that after an attempt by the Soldier and the Condemned man to board the boat, he grabs a heavy rope and pushes them away symbolizing the escape from totalitarianism. Kafka is consciously developing a distance from primitive traditional laws and judicial systems. The Officer’s death and the motion to self-punish and inscribe the words “Be Just!” on himself means that he finally acknowledged his unjust ruling. The end of the reign of the old Governor corresponds with the beginning of the World War. The freeing of the unjustly Condemned man, was a symbol for Kafka that the war meant an end to colonialist imperial Europe. He welcomed democracy with open arms, however, he was not naïve to think that the autorotative system will not come back. In retrospect, he was right, because around 30 years later, World War II started. To analyze in-depth every crucial conversation and action of any of Kafka’s stories requires studying his works and reading his letters and diaries extensively. Kafka’s writing related very closely to the psychosocial field and is very relevant until this day. Hannah Arendt wrote that Kafka’s stories are blueprints, a product of thinking rather than of a mere sense experience (Arendt, 1944). Depressive, melancholic, miserable, and alone, he died without knowing and realizing this importance. That is why it is important to remember him and his work as being before its time. Bibliography :Arendt H. (1944). Franz Kafka: A Revaluation. Partisan Review, pp. 8.Brod M. (1937). Franz Kafka, a Biography.Kafka F. (1917). In the Penal Colony.
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