The Utopian Dimension of Kafka's “In The Penal Colony”

“In the Penal Colony” incorporates the dilemma of Utopia expressed in a continuum from the Utopian spiritual longing to its material Dystopian realization and the Anti‐Utopian attempt to retreat from it. The spatial and temporal background of the story is portrayed as a movement from centrality and timelessness (Utopian) to peripherness and sequential time (Dystopian and Anti‐Utopian). The spiritually closed, homogeneous, and coherent Utopian world of the Old Commandant turns into Dystopian nightmare while being implemented by the machine and leads to a retreat to the Anti‐Utopian world of the colony. The “stranger,” the “guide” and the “common member,” representative figures of the Utopian genre, are projected into a Kafkaesque world as characterised by the stranger, explorer, officer, condemned man and soldier. Kafka's unique clustering of figures emphasises the Utopian dilemma. A feeling of anguish is expressed in the description of three meaningful moments of “silence,” placed at significant points within the structure and expressing the experience of “… guilt (that) is never to be doubted” in the Penal Colony.