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| “ | Be Just! | „ |
| ~ The Old Commandant's most famous inscription. |
The Old Commandant is the overarching antagonist of Franz Kafka’s 1919 short story In the Penal Colony. Though dead before the story begins, his legacy—and the brutal machine of torture and execution he created—still dominates the island colony. Revered by the Officer and feared by the others, the Old Commandant represents a regime of absolute authority, unquestioned tradition, and merciless justice.
Biography[]
The Old Commandant was once the undisputed ruler of a remote penal colony, where he established a brutal and elaborate system of justice centered around a nightmarish execution apparatus of his own design. Under his regime, punishment was not merely retributive—it was ritualized, sacred, and aesthetic. His signature device, referred to only as "the machine," inscribed the criminal’s sentence into their flesh over the course of twelve hours, culminating in death. The process was considered a spiritual revelation for the condemned, who were never told their crime beforehand, learning it only through suffering.
To the Old Commandant, the machine symbolized the perfection of justice: pain as enlightenment, execution as salvation, and law as unquestionable decree. He was revered by his followers, most notably the Officer, who served under him and continues to operate the machine even after his death. The Officer regards the Old Commandant’s laws as divinely inspired and the machine as an artifact of moral and artistic genius.
Despite the apparent reverence, the Old Commandant's regime was harsh, silent, and absolute. He allowed no room for trial, defense, or reform. Dissent was either crushed or redirected into ritual compliance. He ruled with an invisible but total authority, and the penal colony operated as a reflection of his will.
Eventually, the Old Commandant died, and with his death came a change in the colony’s administration. A New Commandant began dismantling the cruel practices and distanced himself from the execution machine and its ideological legacy. However, rather than destroying the machine or condemning the Old Commandant outright, the New Commandant allowed the old system to decay quietly, relegating it to obscurity.
The Officer, mourning the passing of the old ways and the decline of the machine, attempts to convert a visiting Traveler to his cause, hoping for outside validation. When the Traveler remains neutral and refuses to endorse the practice, the Officer decides to sacrifice himself to the machine. But without the Old Commandant’s guidance or maintenance, the machine malfunctions—symbolizing the failure of the past to perpetuate itself—and kills the Officer grotesquely without delivering the enlightenment he expected.
At the end of the story, the Traveler visits the Old Commandant’s tomb, where an inscription prophesies his return:
“There is a prophecy that after a certain number of years the Commandant will rise again and lead his adherents to the colony’s reconquest. Have faith and wait!”
Literary Symbolism[]
1. Totalitarian Legacy[]
The Old Commandant embodies the ideal of absolute rule, where justice is not questioned but enforced through mechanical precision. His machine represents the complete fusion of law and violence, eliminating due process, empathy, and subjectivity. The commandant becomes a figure of institutionalized power that outlives the man himself, mirroring the way authoritarian systems persist even after their founders have died.
2. Religious and Messianic Imagery: Old Testament vs. New Testament Allegory[]
One of the most striking symbolic readings of In the Penal Colony is the contrast between the Old Commandant and the New Commandant as an allegory for the Old Testament and the New Testament, respectively.
The Old Commandant, like the Old Testament God, enforces a strict, retributive justice—uncompromising, ritualistic, and often violent. His law is inscribed in flesh, echoing the way divine commandments were engraved on stone tablets. The condemned learn their guilt only through suffering, and punishment is a path to revelation. This reflects the legalism, ritual sacrifice, and divine wrath that characterize much of the Old Testament's view of justice and obedience.
In contrast, the New Commandant—who dismantles the machine and introduces reform—is suggestive of the New Testament’s emphasis on mercy, grace, and internal moral conscience. He does not openly condemn the Old regime but allows its instruments to decay quietly, mirroring how early Christianity emerged from Jewish tradition while redirecting its moral emphasis. The New Commandant’s reforms hint at a more humanized, less punitive system, even as the old one lingers beneath the surface.
The Officer, then, becomes a kind of zealous disciple or high priest of the Old Law, unwilling to accept the shift toward mercy and reform. His suicidal devotion—sacrificing himself on the very altar of the old justice—parallels the tragic fate of those who cannot reconcile their faith in a wrathful, absolute order with a world moving toward forgiveness or ambiguity.
3. Enlightenment through Suffering[]
The Commandant’s justice system operates on the belief that pain is revelatory. The condemned learn their crime through their own physical torture, which is portrayed by his followers as beautiful and transformative. This grotesque inversion of spiritual enlightenment critiques how ideologies justify cruelty by framing it as redemptive—a theme Kafka often associates with both religious fanaticism and bureaucratic cruelty.
4. Resistance to Change[]
The Old Commandant symbolizes the dead hand of tradition, a system so deeply entrenched that its rituals persist even after its moral foundation has collapsed. The New Commandant’s refusal to destroy the machine reflects Kafka’s theme of bureaucratic inertia—the old systems are not eradicated, merely hidden and left to rot. The Officer’s desperate adherence to the Old Commandant’s code reveals the pathology of nostalgia for authoritarian order.
5. The Machine as Metaphor for Bureaucracy[]
The execution apparatus designed by the Old Commandant is a central metaphor in Kafka's work. It is intricate, arcane, and functions without human judgment—just like Kafka’s portrayal of modern bureaucratic institutions. The Old Commandant’s ideal is a perfect machine of punishment, where mechanization replaces morality, and obedience replaces understanding.
6. Death and Resurrection as Political Allegory[]
The prophetic inscription on the Old Commandant’s grave—“Have faith and wait”—is not only religious but political. It evokes the idea that totalitarian ideologies never truly die; they simply sleep, waiting for moments of weakness or disillusionment to return. Kafka uses this motif to warn against romanticizing the past and idolizing powerful leaders, whose “greatness” is built on cruelty.
7. The Erasure of the Individual[]
Under the Old Commandant’s rule, individuals were stripped of identity, explanation, and agency. Kafka shows how such systems are not merely inhumane—they are inhuman, functioning like machines where people are cogs, bodies, or inputs. The Old Commandant’s perfect justice is really the destruction of the self in service to order.
Gallery[]
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 Villains
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Novels, Novellas The Trial: The Court | The Doorkeeper | The Court Officials The Castle: The Castle's Bureaucracy | Klamm Amerika: Senator Jacob | Robinson and Delamarche | Brunelda | Short Stories, Parables, Fragments | ||