IN DER STRAFKOLONIE” (In the Penal Colony) is a text that has often been accorded a special place in Kafka’s oeuvre. In his authoritative early study Tragik und Ironie, first published in 1964, Walter Sokel seeks to establish the transitional status of this text in two principal respects: with regard to its narrative structure, Sokel identifies in “Strafkolonie” a shift from the perspectival, “expressionistic” narratives of Kafka’s earlier period to the “parabolic” writing of his later years (103); and in terms of tone and thematic approach, Sokel views this text as a first step away from the “tragic” dramatization of Kafka’s father conflict in the early texts to the ironic presentation of this problematic in the later works (129–31). If Sokel views the uniqueness of this text as deriving precisely from the complexities and polyvalence constituted by its transitional, quasi-experimental nature, other critics have insisted, on the contrary, that what makes “Strafkolonie” anomalous in the context of Kafka’s other works is its closure and univocality. For Heinz Politzer, for example, it is “outwardly the most conclusive” of all of Kafka’s short stories (98). Similarly Ingeborg Henel, in an influential 1973 essay on the form of this work and its relative place in Kafka’s overall literary production, claims that this story’s peculiarity resides in the absence of the mysterious, opaque, and riddle-like quality characteristic of Kafka’s other works (500).

The thesis that “Strafkolonie” is the most straightforward and transparent of Kafka’s longer narratives seems to be belied by the critical reception of this text, which has produced a plethora of diverse interpretations rivaled only by the critical response to the novels Der Proceß (The Trial) and Das Schloß (The Castle) and such seminal stories as “Das Urteil” (The Judgment) and “Die Verwandlung” (The Metamorphosis). Indeed, one might justifiably claim that the spectrum of hermeneutic engagements with “In der Strafkolonie” is broader than that evoked by most of Kafka’s other works. This is due, I believe, to two powerful countertendencies manifest in this text. One of these is the almost nebulous, highly abstract quality of the plot and central images of the story.