The Incoherence of the Sentence in Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”

The Incoherence of the Sentence in Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”

“Forgive me if my explanations seem rather incoherent” (Kafka 144). Such is the officer’s response, in Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony,” when he discovers that the explorer sent to witness the execution does not yet understand the method by which the sentence is executed on the condemned prisoners. The officer claims that by having the sentence inscribed into their bodies, the prisoners have an enlightening moment in which they fully comprehend their crime, but this claim is continually undermined by the theme of inexpressibility that runs throughout the story. Though the method of execution seems inhumane to the explorer, the circuitous explanation of the device of torture, the practice of not informing prisoners of the terms of their guilt, and several miscommunications that beset the characters suggest that the officer’s plea for clemency in his use of the apparatus is incoherent, and the meaning of the sentence will inevitably remain unrevealed.

While the officer becomes shocked that the method of execution had not previously been explained to the explorer, he is at first pleased, and wants nothing more than to give his own description of the apparatus. However, he is unable to do this in a manner that the explorer fully understands. When the officer notices the explorer’s first interest in the machine and “stop[s] explaining in order to leave a space… for quiet observation” (143), it is the first hint that he wants the explorer to give his own judgment of the execution. Yet the officer does not let the explorer utter a full sentence before butting in with a technical description of the apparatus’s parts, which still leaves out the main detail of how the device actually works. The officer later shows the explorer the old Commandant’s plans for the apparatus, but the explorer only sees “a labyrinth of lines crossing and recrossing each other” (148), and cannot understand the sentence. Though the officer points out each letter of his own verdict, “BE JUST” (161), the explorer still cannot see the sentence in the confusion of lines. Like the validity of using the apparatus, the elaborate script of its sentences is only clear to the officer, and does nothing to convince the explorer of the machine’s rightness.

Similarly, the prisoner does not understand the machine or even the charges against him, which further displeases the explorer. When asked about the penal colony’s judicial process, the officer explains that the prisoner does not know his sentence, does not know that this or any sentence has been passed on him, and has not been given a chance to defend himself. The only evidence of the man’s guilt is the word of his captain, and the officer suggests that if he had interrogated the prisoner, “things would have got into a confused tangle” (146). While this already seems a barbaric lack of judicial clarification, the incoherence of the sentence for the prisoner is exacerbated by the condemned man’s inability to understand the officer’s French language. Through the story, the prisoner tries to follow the officer’s explanations, but even when he is placed under the Harrow, the part of the apparatus that does the inscribing, it is not indicated that he has any comprehension of what is going to happen to him. It is shortly after this incoherent parody of justice that the explorer is first tempted “to denounce this execution or actually try to stop it” (151).

Despite the officer’s gradually more insistent pleas for help, it is this desire to intervene that stays with the explorer. But when he finally passes his own sentence on the apparatus of execution, he does not directly explain to the officer that he disapproves of the procedure because it is inhumane. Due to this miscommunication, the officer is led to believe that the apparatus has been negatively judged because the explorer “did not find the procedure convincing” (160). Consequently, he decides to condemn both himself and the machine. While earlier describing the moment of enlightenment that comes to the prisoners, the officer suggests that this “might tempt one to get under the Harrow oneself” (150). When the machine is finally put into motion however, it does not produce a sentence on the officer’s back, but merely stabs him to death, and the explorer notes that there is no such moment of understanding on the man’s face.

Through these instances of inexpressibility in “In the Penal Colony,” Kafka is suggesting that it may be impossible to pass a sentence, whether on a person or a cultural practice, and have that sentence by understood.

Works Cited
Kafka, Franz. “In the Penal Colony.” The Complete Stories. Ed. Nahum N. Glatzer. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: Schocken Books, 1971. Pgs 140-167