Kafka

how quiet he grows at just about the sixth hour! Enlightenment comes to the most dull-witted. As a foreigner, the explorer feels unqualified to correct the injustice in other people¡¯s country. Extending this analogy, Kafka clearly states that there is no true judgment on earth as desmonstrated in the Penal Colony. In fact, the officer takes the explorer¡¯s opinion as a final judgment that the old tradition should retire.

Nonetheless, the explorer is conflicted by his position and by the struggle between the cultural changes in the colony. He sets the condemned man free and places himself in the death machine instead. However, he understands that the new colony will not perform true justice, either. This frustrating fact demonstrates the imperfection of the human nature. Moreover, he is never told about his conviction or his sentence at all. Nothing more happens than that the man begins to understand the inscription; he purses his mouth as if he were listening. Maybe the new commandant will punish his prisoners with physically more humane punishment; yet, with visible corruptions, justice is far away in the new colony still. The machine would not have a problem with writing ¡°HONOR THY SUPERIOR!¡± on the condemned man¡¯s body since the sentence is somewhat disassociated with its own characteristics (144). Indeed, the death of officer automatically means the death of the machine at the same time.