The Relation Between the Characters and Their Corrupt Colony in In the Penal Colony Samuel Rummell College

In the short story In the Penal Colony, Franz Kafka utilizes his characters and their dialogue to foreshadow future events in the story and to relate the individual characters to the story’s overarching theme of corruption and justice. Throughout the short story, though particularly in the third and fifteenth (beginning with “The traveler had a quick look...”) paragraphs of the text, Kafka illustrates the Officer’s foreshadowing of the horrendous yet fitting end to the tale and the high level of corruption that exists in the penal colony, as well as a sense of justice. Also, the ideas of Michael Segedy and Arnold Weinstein regarding corruption and justice (respectively) will be discussed in relation to In the Penal Colony.

The Officer’s Tense Foreshadowing

In the third paragraph of the story, Kafka uses a tense conversation between the Officer and the Traveler to hint at the grave end of the story. The whole scene is tense, and Kafka uses the tension and dialogue to foreshadow a potential breakdown of the apparatus. Kafka only touches on the Officer being an odd and cruel character in the preceding paragraphs, but in this excerpt, the Officer explains that “the apparatus is supposed to keep going for twelve hours without...