Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyse a short story by Franz Kafka In the Penal Colony (In der Strafkolonie). At the beginning, the circumstances surrounding the creation of the novel were described. After that the images of the colonizers (Officer, Explorer) and the colonized (Condemned, Soldier) were presented. Thereafter, the process of justice and mechanism of execution – the use of an elaborate torture device that carves the sentence of the prisoner on his skin – were interpreted. In the last part of the article the attitude of Kafka towards process of decolonization was described.