The Trial famously opens with its protagonist, Josef K. At the end of The Trial , Josef K. Of course, the difference is that in this story, the man who approves and works for the system readily offers himself as a willing sacrifice on the altar of the device, if you will. The Condemned is actually allowed to go free. But in both texts, a religious interpretation is applicable.
Religion often encourages presumption of personal guilt, for which one must spend a lifetime atoning with good deeds. The doctrine of Original Sin teaches that we are, in the words of the poet Fulke Greville, created sick and commanded to be sound. Of course, parallels can also be drawn between the slow, lingering death and mystical epiphany experienced by the victims of the execution device and the Crucifixion.
In this interpretation, if the Commandant is the Old Testament God i. And that's probably where suffering, or punishment, comes in. By making someone suffer, you can make them appreciate how awful, how guilty they truly are. There's something redemptive about that: in realizing their guilt and feeling repentant, the person overcomes the guilt. That's one way of understanding what the apparatus does, and why the extreme suffering, the prisoner's "learning through his wounds," is so important: it's the only way to really make the prisoner feel guilt.
In doing so, the prisoner becomes better than he's ever been for the brief moments that remain until he dies, that is. Maybe that's why the officer believes that his methods are "the most humane, and the most in consonance with human dignity" It could also be that the officer believes those dirty, rotten fellow humans become nobler or better when they submit to or obey something higher than themselves.
It could be God read: the old Commandant , it could be the Law coming from God, i. The apparatus forces the victim into the most extreme kind of submission, depriving him of all of his energy and forcing him to contemplate in agony the "commandment" of the law which he has violated.
The officer also seems to think that the "procedure" brings people together. If multiple people submit to or obey the same thing, and if it's clear what they have to obey — a law, a commandment — then they can feel a unique kind of certainty about what they're doing and come closely together. It seems the officer finds that "everybody's comin' together around Justice! What times these were, my comrade! Maybe the officer just loves seeing people hurt really bad, so much that he's thrilled at the prospect of hurting really bad himself.
The guy does say, with excitement: Nowadays the machine can no longer wring from anyone a sigh louder than the felt gag can stifle; but in those days the writing needles let drop an acid fluid, which we're no longer permitted to use.
And it's also worth remembering he was fond of attending the executions with children under each arm…we won't even go there.
At the end of the day, we can't know whether or not to just dismiss him as a sadist or a madman, or to take him seriously. What's your take on him?
Parents Home Homeschool College Resources. He observes. Maybe that's why he's bored and tired. By the time he's visited the penal colony, he probably thinks he's seen it all , and would rather not be stuck in some tropical armpit of a penal colony with bright sun and sweltering heat. Of course, the explorer doesn't just watch; he also has reactions.
You can actually look at the whole story as the escalation or intensification of the explorer's reaction to what he's seeing, as he gets more drawn in to and troubled by what he sees. What's striking is how gradually it happens. It begins when, after that opening stint of boredom, he feels a "dawning interest" 4. Even after learning that the condemned man has had no trial, is being sentenced to death for disobedience, and will have his sentence "written on his body," the explorer is still only mildly dissatisfied!
The explorer considered the Harrow with a frown. The explanation of the judicial procedure had not satisfied him. We would have totally lost it by then. It's absurd how understated his reactions are to such a gruesome procedure. The explorer seems to think of everything in abstract or intellectual terms. It's a matter of principles. He's made the principle of "non-intervention" an operating procedure for him by now: "He traveled only as an observer, with no intention at all of altering other people's methods of administering justice" And his disapproval of what's going on in the penal colony is made from principle, from his commitments to general ideas of justice and humaneness: "the injustice of the procedure and the inhumanity of the execution were undeniable" A broad, silent grin now appeared on his face and stayed there all the rest of the time.
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