Harrowing Tale

I don't know if there's any writer who can create a mood the way Kafka can. Yet, I think he's misunderstood. The most common error is to mistake the Kafkaesque for the Orwellian. Kafka is not so directly political, nor is he so paranoid--he's more about a world where things are a bit off, where we seem to be on the edge of getting somewhere but never quite make it, and where responses to outrageous situations aren't quite what we'd expect.

Kafka can be quite funny, but his stories are so odd many miss the humor. And what he perhaps does best is approach horrific situations from unusual angles--where more conventional writers would simply exploit the horror, Kafka has other things in mind.

Look at "The Metamorphosis." Gregor Samsa awakes to find himself a gigantic bug. Horrifying, but his main concern is how can he continue with his middle-class existence. As the story progresses, Samsa becomes more and more degraded, which, oddly enough, allows his family to blossom. Or think of "A Hunger Artist." The story doesn't focus on the bizarre notion of starving yourself in front of paying crowds, but rather on the nostalgia of the Artist--he's lost his former glory. All the old pomp is gone. Nowadays, they don't care if he starves.

I was thinking of all this recently while reading "In The Penal Colony." The centerpiece of the story is the description of a machine that metes out punishment by literally engraving the name of the crime on the prisoner's body for hours until he dies. For most writers, this would lead to a tale of terror, or justice gone wrong, but Kafka, as always, has other fish to fry. Instead of us seeing the process in its prime, Kafka has the Traveler (sometimes called the Explorer) being shown around the colony by the Officer. The Officer is a great believer in the justice represented by the machine, but with a new Commandant, and with new times, this form of punishment is falling out of favor. The story is a tour de force where the Officer isn't held out as a monster who favors torture, but as a pathetic figure who's trying his best to explain to the Traveler the glory of something he believes in, but fails miserably in getting his message across.

Countless pages have been written about the symbolism and meaning in this story, but to me nothing beats how Kafka can locate real feeling we can all understand--like not being able to communicate something important, and frustration at how others misunderstand what we say--in the midst of an otherwise fantastic and outrageous tale.