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The injustice of the procedure and inhumanity of the execution were incontestable

The very last words of In the Penal Colony move across my bewildered eyes, sitting in the Kafkaesque corner of my apartment, I feel numb since words refuse to come to my observant mind, the comatose feeling blinds my consciousness which fails to pick up words from cerebral saucepan. The prophetic fable of Kafka is full of Kafkaesque elements which would provide eerie dizzying delight to his fans. Set in a remote colonial outpost, it shows a state executioner demonstrating a dilapidated, death-dealing machine, which graphically inscribes the prisoner's sentence on his skin, to a bemused visitor.

The familiar world of Kafka engulfs the reader as soon the reader gets immersed in the prose, the man is condemned to exist in harrowing condition, he is supposed to show utmost sincerity to fulfill the senseless jobs such as saluting his senior and in this nonsensical endeavor, he deprives himself of his basic human needs such as sound sleep. We see the usual terrifying but the very real universe of Kafka wherein the life of a man may be doomed to death for a mere threat, such is the mockery of human existence, for his existence is ridiculed to zilch. The torturous causation of crime and punishment is awfully skewed in Kafka’s world wherein the prisoner doesn’t know about his punishment neither has any say in his judgment. It represents a chilling, dark world wherein human existence is reduced to nothingness so much so that people are reduced to just subject of horrific and horrendous acts of humanity, these acts take inspiration from the most harrowing and disgusting examples from human civilization such as wars, concentration camps, the game of thrones, religion and lust for power.

The execution machine symbolizes commandments of eternal justice which has to go on no matter what and at whatever price, even if maybe that of humanity, for humanity is for those who involve in silly games, for those who do real deeds, the devil oozes its hellish blessings uninitiated and uninterruptedly. And those who are being sacrificed in this ultimate advent of god should not be given a voice, for they may not be able to distinguish what is good for them from what is just. As justice is a concept conceptualized by those who never accord in the grand procession and more often than not, distract the world through their struggle for fad things such as equality, nature, existence. The world here demands eternal sacrifice which sometimes engulfs those who propagate it. The participants of Kafka’s world roam through unknown labyrinths in which human existence constantly struggles to come to terms with the absurd vagaries of life.

The labyrinth is perhaps like Dante’s hell where fire keeps burning the desire to maintain commandments as it should be, sometimes some immature, progressive people upsurge from its inferno to show the world about the injustice they have following without knowing however that doesn’t mean they will always be succeeded. What Kafka is saying is that a certain measure of decadence seems to be inevitably a part of civilization and that the "modern" ideals of rationality and liberalism tend to give way too easily to considerations of utility and to the whims of the people.

The progressive people shy away from raising their voice against injustice and sometimes get mesmerized by the dutiful but false conviction of those who sacrifice themselves feeling great but inhumane pride in it. These progressive people proclaim that they can neither help nor hinder the eternal procession because "interference is always touchy." They do not like the in-just system, however, their humanity is just a shield for their convenient relativism. So we come across a gruesome, harrowing, and disheartening realization that those so-called progressive and modern people who are manifestations of justice, empathy, and liberalism are not automatically superior to the seemingly regressive system. In fact, it represents a classical dilemma torturing humankind since the dawn of civilization, to find a balance between individual freedom and social obligations. Our history is self-sufficient evidence that many times human beings have to wander from one to other extremes as to feel humane and reformists, but only to realize that the vicious swing has repeated itself time and again and perhaps will follow the same path. And this ghastly acceptance leaves a bad taste to acknowledge that though the world must be humane and just the retrogressive system is perhaps the harsh and bitter truth of humanity.



It was as it had been in life; there was no trace of the promised transfiguration; the thing that all the others had found in the machine, the officer himself had failed to find; his lips were pressed together, his eyes were open, their expression was that of the living man, their look was firm and assure, and the point of the great iron spike had passed through the forehead.