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A story of a man who visits a remote island where a brutal execution device is used to inscribe the condemned person's crime on their body. The story explores themes of autobiography, politics, and theology, and foreshadows the horrors of totalitarian regimes.
A short story by Franz Kafka about a brutal execution machine in an island colony. The story explores themes of justice, guilt, and religion, and has been adapted into a play and a film.
- Franz Kafka
- 1919
A short story about a traveler who visits a penal colony where a soldier is executed by a mysterious device that writes on his flesh. The story explores themes of punishment, power, and morality in a dystopian setting.
The story begins in a penal colony on an unnamed tropical island with no stated nationality. A military Officer shows an apparatus to a man known only as “the Traveler” who was invited by the Commandant to witness an execution.
In the Penal Colony, novella by Franz Kafka, written in 1914 and published in German as In der Strafkolonie in 1919. An allegorical fantasy about law and punishment, it was also viewed as an existential comment on human torment and on strict devotion to an ambiguous task.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
A story by Franz Kafka about a machine that writes a prisoner's sentence on his body. The explorer witnesses the execution and questions the cruel and arbitrary justice of the penal colony.
Learn about Franz Kafka's short story "In the Penal Colony" with LitCharts, a comprehensive literature guide. Find plot summary, analysis, themes, quotes, characters, symbols, and more.
