Penal colony

In the short story, In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka, we are introduced to a horrible device that is used to torture and execute prisoners. This apparatus does this by repeatedly writing the word of the law that the condemned person had broken into their flesh like a bizarre tattoo artist made of pain and blood. It is both sickening and fascinating to read the account of how this machine operates from the character named the Officer as he describes in gross details just what this monster of metal

include some form of absolute divine punishment that defeats the need for a judicial system altogether. With In the Penal Colony, Kafka gives us an opportunity to explore a society in which the legal system involves absolute punishment without divine intervention, and challenges us to think normatively about it and the effects it has on society. In the society where In the Penal Colony is set, a unique system of justice and punishment is used. Following the principle that “guilt is always beyond doubt

The Officer in “In the Penal Colony” Franz Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony” explores the identities and beliefs of the characters without ever explicitly giving them names or points to reference them by other than their titles. This allows us to really delve into who the characters are, and allows us to add the concept of who the character is to things we see in history, daily life, or other characters. Kafka uses the character of the Officer to show the poisonous ways of staying in old

For this unit, I decided to read Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony.” The author, Franz Kafka, was an early 20th century middle-class Jew who lived in Prague and wrote mostly in German. The present short story, published in 1919, refers to an unnamed penal colony somewhere in the tropics and focuses on four characters: the commander of the camp, an invited foreign dignitary, a guard, and a victim. The story revolves a twisted idea of justice, where the punishment does not fit the crime, and the condemned

Kafka's In the Penal Colony chronicles a colony's justice system, from the point of view of an outsider. Through the narrative, the reader is able to witness several oddities in the way that justice is carried out. In the Penal Colony compares to Duff and Garland's Introduction: Thinking about Punishment, the versus surrounding the trial of Jesus, and the story of the deluge in the normative issues of crime, punishment , and justice that it brings to light. In Kafka's In the Penal Colony, the officer

In the Penal Colony - Franz Kafka Short Story, Fiction In the Penal Colony portrays a main protagonist who is referred to as the Explorer. The Explorer observes the negative impact totalitarianism takes on humanity, as he observes an island community run purely off justice enforced by a single torture apparatus. I believe the main idea revolving around this text is the issue of totalitarianism in third-world countries and how it can be avoided. An underlying example of how this can be stopped

In Franz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony,” there is no presumption of innocence whatsoever; there is only presumption. “Innocent until proven guilty.” This presumption of innocence is considered to be the foundation of a civilized criminal justice system, as well as within the fundamental rights of mankind. The Officer says that “guilt is never to be doubted,” and because he was ordained the judge of the penal colony, there is no proper trial or “due process” needed, as all are guilty in the eyes of

in a colonized land is a different one. Since, in a colony the judicial system is mostly in the hands of the colonizers, therefore, there is full possibility of the same to be bias or unequal.Law in literature has now become an established discipline for its gives a picture of what is happening in a society. This paper makes an attempt to study law and its portrayal in the literature by bringing in Franz Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony” in the context. Kafka’s short story can be studied

Ambiguity of Characters in Franz Kafka’s ‘In The Penal Colony’ and ‘Waiting for The Barbarians’ J.M. Coetzee is one of many well-known post-colonial writers. He was born and spent hid childhood in South Africa. Therefore, many people think that his novel “Waiting for The Barbarians” is an allegory of the situation of South African in a time of apartheid (Head 75). In addition, Coetzee is strongly influenced by the famous author, Franz Kafka. As a result, it is not surprised that “Waiting for

Midterm Exam #1 Franz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” teaches us about the possibilities of justice for all because in the story the ‘Officer’, who believes in the heavily in the apparatus and the punishment of bad behavior ends up killing himself with the apparatus because he finally realizes that he was immoral for torturing human beings. The officer gets the words “Be Just” engraved on him when he dies to knowledge the fact that he sacrificed his life in order to restore righteousness. The ‘Condemned