In the Penal Colony
short story by Franz Kafka
"In the Penal Colony" ("In der Strafkolonie"; also translated as "In the Penal Settlement") is a short story by Franz Kafka written in German in October 1914, revised in November 1918, and first published in October 1919.
The story is set in an unnamed penal colony and describes the last use of an elaborate torture and execution device that carves the name of the offense that the condemned prisoner committed on his skin as he slowly dies over the course of twelve hours. As the plot unfolds, the reader learns more and more about the machine, including its origin and original justification.
Plot outline
Characters
There are only four characters, each named according to his role in the story. The Condemned is a man scheduled for execution, the Soldier is responsible for guarding him, the Officer is in charge of the machine that will execute the Condemned, and the Traveller is a European dignitary and visitor.
Synopsis
The story focuses on the Traveller, who has just arrived in an island penal colony and is encountering its brutal execution machine for the first time. Everything about the functioning of the intricate machine and its purpose and history is told to him by the Officer. The Soldier and the Condemned, who is unaware that he has been sentenced to die for failing to get up and salute outside his captain's door each hour during his night watch, and for resisting when the captain whipped him across the face, placidly watch from nearby.
Under the judicial process associated with the machine, the accused is always assumed to be guilty and is not given a chance to defend himself. As punishment, the law the man has broken is inscribed progressively deeper on his body over a period of 12 hours as he slowly dies from his wounds.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “In the Penal Colony” as short story by Franz Kafka. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as short story by Franz Kafka. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1660727. VIAF identifies the subject as 192757177. The Library of Congress control number is no2012101447. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914, 1918 and 1919.
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This entry incorporates text from “In the Penal Colony” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.