The Penal Colony is the last story I'm going to review from this collection of short stories written by Kafka.
The story is written in third person/limited. We see everything through the eyes of a man referred to as the traveler, although we come to know through the dialogue that he is a doctor. The traveler has come to visit a penal colony. The officer who oversees the colony takes the traveler on a tour of the facility. It is really this officer who tells the story.
While taking him around, the officer expounds on his philosophy on justice. The officer considers any infraction of the rules, no matter how minor, to receive the consequences of justice. This brand of justice is rigidly and mercilessly meted out by the lieutenant with absolutely no exceptions. All infractions incur the death penalty.
And not just the death penalty, but death by torture. The officer ends his tour by showing the doctor his piece de resistance. The instrument that is used to torture prisoners and rule-breaking guards to death.
It is a gruesome invention that was designed to take hours to kill the "criminal". After it finally exterminates its victim, a hole is conveniently located beneath the machine to dispose of whatever is left of what once was a human being.
While the officer is explaining the instrument, the traveler notices a guard in chains. Upon inquiring, he finds out that this soldier's job was to sleep in front of a captain's door but to wake up at every hour to salute the door. One night the captain went to check to make sure the guard was really saluting his door on every hour. When he finds the guard curled up asleep on the sidewalk he lashes his face with a whip. The guard shakes the captain and tells the man to "throw away his whip or I'll swallow you whole!"
The captain reported the incident to the officer and the guard is now waiting to be executed in the machine. The traveler is appalled but at the same time doesn't feel he can do anything to stop what is happening.
It turns out that the officer understands that a new Commandant is in power, unlike the old Commandant, this one considers the death machine inhumane. The officer hopes by showing the traveler everything and explaining how things stand he will persuade the new Commandant not to interfere.
The traveler tells the officer that he has no choice but to be honest and tell the Commandant exactly what he has seen. He is careful not to give his personal judgment on anything.
However, the officer knows enough of the new Commandant that he is the sort that does not believe in the Penal Colony's type of justice. He knows that an era is about to end.
The officer knows that with the new Commandant, a new definition of justice will replace the old one and consequently redefine what the officer has termed "just". Not only will the officer's executions be considered wrong, but will be considered criminal. What does that make him?
He looks at the traveler with understanding. He assumes they both understand the situation. The traveler does not understand but soon finds out what the officer means to do. The officer believes he must carry out one more act of justice. Only this act of justice will conform to the new rules. The traveler watches in horror as the officer straps himself in the torture machine and dies horribly.
Again, this story raises a lot of questions in my mind. What was Kafka getting at? What was the message in this story? Was he saying that morality is dependent on who is in power? The traveler, who also serves as narrator, clearly finds the officers "justice" as wrong, even though he takes a passive stance.
Kafka doesn't seem to be making a statement of relative morality because he is obviously trying to provoke the reader to a strong sense of injustice when regarding the hapless guard who is clearly being treated unjustly.
Is he trying to make a thinly veiled comment on how he sees countries such as Germany or other European countries creating their own moralities based on the whims of despots?
It's strange that the officer, who so gladly and easily condemned others to horrible deaths, carried his strange logic out to his own demise. No one in real life would do that. They would either repent of how they acted or go to their grave defending it. Justice is carried out through outside parties (as in the Nuremberg trials).
And then there's the traveler. Why did he feel so helpless? Does he represent the rest of us when we see injustice happen but are too intimidated to stand up to it?
Even the guard is portrayed as passively accepting his verdict. He never shows outrage or a sense that his punishment does not fit the crime.
Yet in the end the traveler made it clear without stating his own opinion what he was going to do (report to the new commandant) and in the end his actions, albeit passive, did effect change.
Letters to Family, Friends and Editors is a book that is a collection of letters written by Kafka. I would like to read it to see if it sheds any light on Kafka's intentions in writing his stories.
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In addition to The Metamorphosis, the collection of short stories by Franz Kafka includes The Judgment and The Stoker. I am going to try to give a brief review of each of these stories.
The Judgment is another story about a father and son. Georg Bendemann is a young businessman who has done quite successfully for himself. He has recently become engaged and is debating within himself whether he should inform a friend, who is living in another country, of his impending marriage. This friend has not fared well in his career or in relationships. Georg wonders if news of his own good fortune would not cause his friend more grief.
When he finishes his letter he enters into the room where his invalid father is staying. It is time to help his father to bed. As he assists his dad to his bed, he informs him of the letter to his friend. The father does not recognize the name of the man. Georg spends some time reminding him of who he is.
As he finishes tucking him into bed, his father suddenly sits up and blazes out all sorts of vile accusations towards his son. He accuses Georg of cheating his friend and causing his poverty. He makes nasty (and graphic) insinuations about his fiancee.
Georg listens to all of this incredulously. He feebly tries to defend himself but he is no match for his father's vitriol. One accusation after another rolls off his father's tongue. In the end his father pronounces judgment. Georg will receive the death penalty by drowning.
As soon as the judgment is made, Georg feels himself propelled out of the room, across the street and over the bridge where he hangs on weakly. He murmurs, "Dear parents, I have always loved you," and lets go.
This raises all sorts of questions in the reader's mind. At least my mind. Maybe some would dismiss it with a shrug ("that was a queer little story...what's for lunch?").
At first one thinks the father is crazy. But if so, why is Georg so helpless? Why does he carry out his father's sentence? Was his father speaking the truth after all? Was Georg's conscience smitten while listening to his father?
Or is there another reason? Regardless of the reality of the situation, is Georg's father such a dominating force in his life that he surrenders to anything his father demands?
The next story, The Stoker, is about a young man, Karl Rossmann, who is about to disembark from a ship that has sailed from Germany to America. The reason he is on the ship is stated in the first paragraph. Karl has gotten one of his family's housemaids pregnant and his parents have shipped him off because they didn't want to pay child support.
They sent him off with nothing but enough money for the fare and a suitcase. He is expected to find work and maybe an uncle who lives in New York.
Before leaving the ship, however, he becomes involved in a situation that has nothing to do with him. The stoker of the ship has become disgruntled with his job. In fact he believes he has been cheated of his pay and that another ship mate is back-stabbing him to get his position. Karl listens to the man's story and encourages him to take his complaint to the captain.
Karl accompanies the man through the whole ordeal- one that doesn't end in the stoker's favor. As Karl tries to explain the stoker's position to the captain, a crowd of ship workers cram themselves into the Captain's cabin, including the "back-stabber". Everyone is shouting and talking at once. In the middle of all the hullaballoo Karl's uncle-who happens to be a highly successful politician- enters the room. He collars Karl and escorts him off the ship.
On their way out of the ship, we learn through the third person narrator that Karl, who is only sixteen, was actually sexually abused by the house maid. Learning this fact, causes the reader to completely rethink the entire story.
It seems Kafka's intention was to present Karl as a cad who impregnated a helpless house servant and his parents as people who had spoiled and indulged their son and are trying to protect from the responsibility of his selfish actions. With a flip of the wrist, Kafka shows us the face of the card to reveal that it is Karl who was the helpless victim and also abandoned. The stoker's saga seems to have been inserted as a red herring in order to increase the effect of the "twist".
There seems to be an underlying theme in all the stories so far reviewed. A son who is not loved by his family, especially his parents, and particularly his father.
I first read The Metamorphosis in high school. No, it was not assigned reading. I read my father's copy during Geometry class. Suffice it to say I didn't have a future in engineering. I could tell that the story symbolized something. I just wasn't sure what. I didn't know that Kafka was Jewish at the time, but since he was from Eastern Europe, I concluded that the protagonist represented Jews during Nazi- occupied Europe. It made sense. Here was a group of people living their lives like everyone else. Going to work, raising their families, getting along with their neighbors, even had good friendships with non Jews.
Each Jewish person in Germany, and later throughout most of Europe, must have had a moment in time when they realized that they no longer belonged to the whole. They had been cut adrift. Had, in fact, turned into something as repulsive as an insect to the rest of society. A society they had belonged to as a vibrant, productive member. Kafka's short story seemed to be telling this story through allegory.
Yet when I recently read the story again, I discovered that Kafka had actually died during the 1920's. His work was published in 1915. He wouldn't have known about the rise of Hitler or the dark spell he cast across the European continent. Perhaps it's just as well. Not too many years later, the rest of Kafka's family died in concentration camps.
The Story:
Gregor Samsa is a hard working young man who struggles to provide for his family. He has no wife or children. He is financially supporting his father, mother and a sister. His hours are long and he is often away from home. Yet he is devoted to his family and willingly toils away.
One morning he wakes up to discover that he is some kind of giant insect. He no longer can work and his family is horrified.
As the story unfolds, we witness his parents overcoming their initial fear, and developing a sullen resentment against Gregor's plight. At first his sister shows compassion but she too, eventually neglects him. We come to understand that Gregor was working hard to pay off a debt his father had accrued. Furthermore, we find out that there is no reason for his father not to work, he simply refuses to and expects Gregor to provide. This Gregor had been willing to do until his present predicament. The reason for his family's outrage and resentment against Gregor is that he is no longer useful.
Eventually, Gregor starves to death. His family is relieved, go out, get jobs of their own and carry on with their lives.
One feels pity for Gregor, who never seems to resent his family's attitude but only regrets that he is no longer able to help them.
This leaves the reader with a number of questions. Why was Gregor so submissive to such a selfish father? Why did he enable his indolence? Why did he never wake up to the fact that his family never really cared for him, had no respect for him?
I read some of the biography that this edition provided and I form the conclusion that Gregor represented Kafka and he put into parable form his perception of his relationship with his father. In one letter to his father Kafka wrote, "My writing was all about you..."
This seems evident in some of the other stories included in this collection.
The story is mostly told in third person/limited from Gregor's viewpoint. We know Gregor's thoughts- how he feels about his discovery, his reaction to others' words and actions, how he learns to cope with his new body- this enables the reader to vicariously experience Gregor's life. We learn to empathize with him. His suffering becomes our own.
After Gregor dies, the narrator switches to omniscient. We see how the rest of the family reacts to his death and how they continue on. Perhaps, we feel a certain amount of relief with them but I found it hard to respect them.
Kafka, needless to say, belongs to the genius class of writers because the reality he creates resonates with our own reality. His work may be fiction but it is still our life story as well. Our world, our plights and- for some people- a hopelessness in existing.
Each story in The Metamorphosis and Other Stories is so intriguing, I will have to write separate reviews for the "other stories" in future posts.
I bought this book.
