Fluent Essays

will like an essay on “In the Penal Colony” and “The Lottery”. tradition in both, first draft and last draft. In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka (1919) Translation by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC downloaded from http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/ “It’s a peculiar apparatus,” said the Officer to the Traveller, gazing with a certain admiration at the device, with which he was, of course, thoroughly familiar. It appeared that the Traveller had responded to the invitation of the Commandant only out of politeness, when he had been asked to attend the execution of a soldier condemned for disobeying and insulting his superior. Of course, interest in the execution was not very high even in the penal colony itself. At least, here in the small, deep, sandy valley, closed in on all sides by barren slopes, apart from the Officer and the Traveller there were present only the Condemned, a vacant-looking man with a broad mouth and dilapidated hair and face, and the Soldier, who held the heavy chain to which were connected the small chains which bound the Condemned Man by his feet and wrist bones, as well as by his neck, and which were also linked to each other by connecting chains. The Condemned Man, incidentally, had an expression of such dog-like resignation that it looked as if one could set him free to roam around the slopes and would only have to whistle at the start of the execution for him to return. The Traveller had little interest in the apparatus and walked back and forth behind the Condemned Man, almost visibly indifferent, while the Officer took care of the final preparations. Sometimes he crawled under the apparatus, which was built deep into the earth, and sometimes he climbed up a ladder to inspect the upper parts. These were really jobs which could have been left to a mechanic, but the Officer carried them out with great enthusiasm, maybe because he was particularly fond of this apparatus or maybe because there was some other reason why one could not trust the work to anyone else. “It’s all ready now!” he finally cried and climbed back down the ladder. He was unusually tired, breathing with his mouth wide open, and he had pushed two fine lady’s handkerchiefs under the collar of his uniform. “These uniforms are really too heavy for the tropics,” the Traveller said, instead of asking some questions about the apparatus, as the Officer had expected. “That’s true,” said the Officer. He washed the oil and grease from his dirty hands in a bucket of water standing ready, “but they mean home, and we don’t want to lose our homeland.” “Now, have a look at this apparatus,” he added immediately, drying his hands with a towel and pointing to the device. “Up to this point I had to do some work by hand, but from now on the apparatus should work entirely on its own.” The Traveller nodded and followed the Officer. The latter tried to protect himself against all eventualities by saying, “Of course, breakdowns do happen. I really hope none will occur today, but we must be prepared for it. The apparatus is supposed to keep going In the Penal Colony 2 for twelve hours without interruption. But if any breakdowns do occur, they’ll only be very minor, and we’ll deal with them right away.” “Don’t you want to sit down?” he asked finally, as he pulled out a chair from a pile of cane chairs and offered it to the Traveller. The latter could not refuse. He sat on the edge of the pit, into which he cast a fleeting glance. It was not very deep. On one side of the hole the piled earth was heaped up into a wall; on the other side stood the apparatus. “I don’t know,” the Officer said, “whether the Commandant has already explained the apparatus to you.” The Traveller made an vague gesture with his hand. That was good enough for the Officer, for now he could explain the apparatus himself. “This apparatus,” he said, grasping a connecting rod and leaning against it, “is our previous Commandant’s invention. I also worked with him on the very first tests and took part in all the work right up to its completion. However, the credit for the invention belongs to him alone. Have you heard of our previous Commandant? No? Well, I’m not claiming too much when I say that the organization of the entire penal colony is his work. We, his friends, already knew at the time of his death that the administration of the colony was so self-contained that even if his successor had a thousand new plans in mind, he would not be able to alter anything of the old plan, at least not for several years. And our prediction has held. The New Commandant has had to recognize that. It’s a shame that you didn’t know the previous Commandant!” “However,” the Officer said, interrupting himself, “I’m chattering, and his apparatus stands here in front of us. As you see, it consists of three parts. With the passage of time certain popular names have been developed for each of these parts. The one underneath is called the Bed, the upper one is called the Inscriber, and here in the middle, this moving part is called the Harrow.” “The Harrow?” the Traveller asked. He had not been listening with full attention. The sun was excessively strong, trapped in the shadowless valley, and one could hardly collect one’s thoughts. So the Officer appeared to him all the more admirable in his tight tunic weighed down with epaulettes and festooned with braid, ready to go on parade, as he explained the matter so eagerly and, while he was talking, adjusted screws here and there with a screwdriver. The Soldier appeared to be in a state similar to the Traveller. He had wound the Condemned Man’s chain around both his wrists and was supporting himself with his hand on his weapon, letting his head hang backward, not bothering about anything. The Traveller was not surprised at that, for the Officer spoke French, and clearly neither the Soldier nor the Condemned Man understood the language. So it was all the more striking that the Condemned Man, in spite of that, did what he could to follow the Officer’s explanation. With a sort of sleepy persistence he kept directing his gaze to the place where the Officer had just pointed, and when a question from the Traveller interrupted the Officer, the Condemned Man looked at the Traveller, too, just as the Officer was doing. “Yes, the Harrow,” said the Officer. “The name fits. The needles are arranged as in a harrow, and the whole thing is driven like a harrow, although it stays in one place and In the Penal Colony 3 is, in principle, much more artistic. You’ll understand in a moment. The condemned is laid out here on the Bed. First, I’ll describe the apparatus and only then let the procedure go to work. That way you’ll be able to follow it better. Also a sprocket in the Inscriber is excessively worn. It really squeaks. When it’s in motion one can hardly make oneself understood. Unfortunately replacement parts are difficult to come by in this place. So, here is the Bed, as I said. The whole thing is completely covered with a layer of cotton wool, the purpose of which you’ll find out in a moment. The condemned man is laid out on his stomach on the cotton wool—naked, of course. There are straps for the hands here, for the feet here, and for the throat here, to tie him in securely. At the head of the Bed here, where the man, as I have mentioned, first lies face down, is this small protruding lump of felt, which can easily be adjusted so that it presses right into the man’s mouth. Its purpose is to prevent him screaming and biting his tongue to pieces. Of course, the man has to let the felt in his mouth—otherwise the straps around his throat would break his neck.” “That’s cotton wool?” asked the Traveller and bent down. “Yes, it is,” said the Officer smiling, “feel it for yourself.” He took the Traveller’s hand and led him over to the Bed. “It’s a specially prepared cotton wool. That’s why it looks so unrecognizable. I’ll get around to mentioning its purpose in a moment.” The Traveller was already being won over a little to the apparatus. With his hand over his eyes to protect them from the sun, he looked up at the height of the apparatus. It was a massive construction. The Bed and the Inscriber were the same size and looked like two dark chests. The Inscriber was set about two metres above the Bed, and the two were joined together at the corners by four brass rods, which almost reflected the sun. The Harrow hung between the chests on a band of steel. The Officer had hardly noticed the earlier indifference of the Traveller, but he did have a sense now of how the latter’s interest was being aroused for the first time. So he paused in his explanation in order to allow the Traveller time to observe the apparatus undisturbed. The Condemned Man imitated the Traveller, but since he could not put his hand over his eyes, he blinked upward with his eyes uncovered. “So now the man is lying down,” said the Traveller. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “Yes,” said the Officer, pushing his cap back a little and running his hand over his hot face. “Now, listen. Both the Bed and the Inscriber have their own electric batteries. The Bed needs them for itself, and the Inscriber for the Harrow. As soon as the man is strapped in securely, the Bed is set in motion. It quivers with tiny, very rapid oscillations from side to side and up and down simultaneously. You will have seen similar devices in mental hospitals. Only with our Bed all movements are precisely calibrated, for they must be meticulously coordinated with the movements of the Harrow. But it’s the Harrow which has the job of actually carrying out the sentence.” “What is the sentence?” the Traveller asked. “You don’t even know that?” asked the Officer in astonishment and bit his lip. “Forgive me if my explanations are perhaps In the Penal Colony 4 confused. I really do beg your pardon. Previously it was the Commandant’s habit to provide such explanations. But the New Commandant has excused himself from this honourable duty. The fact that with such an eminent visitor”—the Traveller tried to deflect the honour with both hands, but the Officer insisted on the expression—“that with such an eminent visitor he didn’t even once make him aware of the form of our sentencing is yet again something new, which . . . .” He had a curse on his lips, but controlled himself and said merely: “I was not informed about it. It’s not my fault. In any case, I am certainly the person best able to explain our style of sentencing, for here I am carrying”—he patted his breast pocket—“the relevant diagrams drawn by the previous Commandant.” “Diagrams made by the Commandant himself?” asked the Traveller. “Then was he in his own person a combination of everything? Was he soldier, judge, engineer, chemist, and draftsman?” “He was indeed,” said the Officer, nodding his head with a fixed and thoughtful expression. Then he looked at his hands, examining them. They didn’t seem to him clean enough to handle the diagrams. So he went to the bucket and washed them again. Then he pulled out a small leather folder and said, “Our sentence does not sound severe. The law which a condemned man has violated is inscribed on his body with the Harrow. This Condemned Man, for example,” and the Officer pointed to the man, “will have inscribed on his body, ‘Honour your superiors.’” The Traveller had a quick look at the man. When the Officer was pointing at him, the man kept his head down and appeared to be directing all his energy into listening in order to learn something. But the movements of his thick pouting lips showed clearly that he was incapable of understanding anything. The Traveller wanted to raise various questions, but after looking at the Condemned Man he merely asked, “Does he know his sentence?” “No,” said the Officer. He wished to get on with his explanation right away, but the Traveller interrupted him: “He doesn’t know his own sentence?” “No,” said the Officer once more. He then paused for a moment, as if he was asking the Traveller for a more detailed reason for his question, and said, “It would be useless to give him that information. He experiences it on his own body.” The Traveller really wanted to keep quiet at this point, but he felt how the Condemned Man was gazing at him—he seemed to be asking whether he could approve of the process the Officer had described. So the Traveller, who had up to this point been leaning back, bent forward again and kept up his questions, “But does he nonetheless have some general idea that he’s been condemned?” “Not that either,” said the Officer, and he smiled at the Traveller, as if he was still waiting for some strange revelations from him. “No?” said the Traveller, wiping his forehead, “Then does the man also not yet know how his defence was received?” “He has had no opportunity to defend himself,” said the Officer and looked away, as if he was talking to himself and wished not to embarrass the Traveller with an explanation of matters so self-evident to him. “But he must have had a chance to defend himself,” said the Traveller and stood up from his chair. In the Penal Colony 5 The Officer recognized that he was in danger of having his explanation of the apparatus held up for a long time. So he went to the Traveller, took him by the arm, pointed with his hand at the Condemned Man, who stood there stiffly now that the attention was so clearly directed at him—the Soldier was also pulling on his chain— and said, “The matter stands like this. Here in the penal colony I have been appointed judge. In spite of my youth. For I stood at the side of our Old Commandant in all matters of punishment, and I also know the most about the apparatus. The basic principle I use for my decisions is this: Guilt is always beyond a doubt. Other courts could not follow this principle, for they are made up of many heads and, in addition, have even higher courts above them. But that is not the case here, or at least it was not that way with the previous Commandant. It’s true the New Commandant has already shown a desire to get mixed up in my court, but I’ve succeeded so far in fending him off. And I’ll continue to be successful. You want this case explained. It’s simple—just like all of them. This morning a captain laid a charge that this man, who is assigned to him as a servant and who sleeps before his door, had been sleeping on duty. For his task is to stand up every time the clock strikes the hour and salute in front of the captain’s door. That’s certainly not a difficult duty—and it’s necessary, since he is supposed to remain fresh both for guarding and for service. Yesterday night the captain wanted to check whether his servant was fulfilling his duty. He opened the door on the stroke of two and found him curled up asleep. He got his horsewhip and hit him across the face. Now, instead of standing up and begging for forgiveness, the man grabbed his master by the legs, shook him, and cried out, ‘Throw away that whip or I’ll eat you up.’ Those are the facts. The captain came to me an hour ago. I wrote up his statement and right after that the sentence. Then I had the man chained up. It was all very simple. If I had first summoned the man and interrogated him, the result would have been confusion. He would have lied, and if I had been successful in refuting his lies, he would have replaced them with new lies, and so forth. But now I have him, and I won’t release him again. Now, does that clarify everything? But time is passing. We should be starting the execution, and I haven’t finished explaining the apparatus yet.” He urged the Traveller to sit down in his chair, moved to the apparatus again, and started, “As you see, the shape of the Harrow corresponds to the shape of a man. This is the harrow for the upper body, and here are the harrows for the legs. This small cutter is the only one designated for the head. Is that clear to you?” He leaned forward to the Traveller in a friendly way, ready to give the most comprehensive explanation. The Traveller looked at the Harrow with a wrinkled frown. The information about the judicial procedures had not satisfied him. However, he had to tell himself that here it was a matter of a penal colony, that in this place special regulations were necessary, and that one had to give precedence to military measures right down to the last detail. Beyond that, however, he had some hopes in the New Commandant, who obviously, although slowly, was intending to introduce a new procedure which the limited understanding of this Officer could not cope with. In the Penal Colony 6 Following this train of thought, the Traveller asked, “Will the Commandant be present at the execution?” “That is not certain,” said the Officer, embarrassingly affected by the sudden question, and his friendly expression made a grimace. “That’s why we need to hurry up. As much as I regret the fact, I’ll have to make my explanation even shorter. But tomorrow, once the apparatus is clean again—the fact that it gets so very dirty is its only fault—I could add a detailed explanation. So now, only the most important things. When the man is lying on the Bed and it starts quivering, the Harrow sinks onto the body. It positions itself automatically in such a way that it touches the body only lightly with the needle tips. Once the machine is set in this position, this steel cable tightens up into a rod. And now the performance begins. Someone who is not an initiate sees no external difference among the punishments. The Harrow seems to do its work uniformly. As it quivers, it sticks the tips of its needles into the body, which is also vibrating from the movement of the bed. Now, to enable someone to check on how the sentence is being carried out, the Harrow is made of glass. That gave rise to certain technical difficulties with fastening the needles securely, but after several attempts we were successful. We didn’t spare any efforts. And now, as the inscription is made on the body, everyone can see through the glass. Don’t you want to come closer and see the needles for yourself.” The Traveller stood slowly, moved up, and bent over the Harrow. “You see,” the Officer said, “two sorts of needles in a multiple arrangement. Each long needle has a short one next to it. The long one inscribes, and the short one squirts water out to wash away the blood and keep the inscription always clear. The bloody water is then channeled here in small grooves and finally flows into these main gutters, and the outlet pipe takes it to the pit.” The Officer pointed with his finger to the exact path which the bloody water had to take. As he began to demonstrate with both hands at the mouth of the outlet pipe, in order to make his account as clear as possible, the Traveller raised his head and, feeling behind him with his hand, wanted to return to his chair. Then he saw to his horror that the Condemned Man had also, like him, accepted the Officer’s invitation to inspect the arrangement of the Harrow up close. He had pulled the sleeping Soldier holding the chain a little forward and was also bending over the glass. One could see how with a confused gaze he also was looking for what the two gentlemen had just observed, but how he didn’t succeed because he lacked the explanation. He leaned forward this way and that. He kept running his eyes over the glass again and again. The Traveller wanted to push him back, for what he was doing was probably punishable. But the Officer held the Traveller firmly with one hand, and with the other he took a lump of earth from the wall and threw it at the Soldier. The latter opened his eyes with a start, saw what the Condemned Man had dared to do, let his weapon fall, braced his heels in the earth, and pulled the Condemned Man back, so that he immediately collapsed. The Soldier looked down at him, as he writhed around, making his chain clink. “Stand him up,” cried the Officer, for he noticed that the Condemned Man was distracting the Traveller too much. The latter was even leaning out away from the Harrow, without paying any attention to it, wanting to find out what was happening to the Condemned Man. “Handle him carefully,” the Officer yelled again. He ran around the apparatus, personally grabbed In the Penal Colony 7 the Condemned Man under the armpits and, with the help of the Soldier, stood the man, whose feet kept slipping, upright. “Now I know all about it,” said the Traveller, as the Officer turned back to him again. “Except the most important thing,” said the latter, grabbing the Traveller by the arm and pointing up high. “There in the Inscriber is the mechanism which determines the movement of the Harrow, and this mechanism is arranged according to the diagram on which the sentence is set down. I still use the diagrams of the previous Commandant. Here they are.” He pulled some pages out of the leather folder. “Unfortunately I can’t hand them to you. They are the most cherished thing I possess. Sit down, and I’ll show you them from this distance. Then you’ll be able to see it all well.” He showed the first sheet. The Traveller would have been happy to say something appreciative, but all he saw was a labyrinthine series of lines, criss-crossing each other in all sort of ways. These covered the paper so thickly that only with difficulty could one make out the white spaces in between. “Read it,” said the Officer. “I can’t,” said the Traveller. “But it’s clear,” said the Officer.” “It’s very elaborate,” said the Traveller evasively, “but I can’t decipher it.” “Yes,” said the Officer, smiling and putting the folder back again, “it’s not calligraphy for school children. One has to read it a long time. You too will finally understand it clearly. Of course, it has to be a script that isn’t simple. You see, it’s not supposed to kill right away, but on average over a period of twelve hours. The turning point is set for the sixth hour. There must also be many, many embellishments surrounding the basic script. The essential script moves around the body only in a narrow belt. The rest of the body is reserved for decoration. Can you now appreciate the work of the Harrow and the whole apparatus? Just look at it!” He jumped up the ladder, turned a wheel, and called down, “Watch out—move to the side!” Everything started moving. If the wheel had not squeaked, it would have been marvelous. The Officer threatened the wheel with his fist, as if he was surprised by the disturbance it created. Then he spread his arms, apologizing to the Traveller, and quickly clambered down, in order to observe the operation of the apparatus from below. Something was still not working properly, something only he noticed. He clambered up again and reached with both hands into the inside of the Inscriber. Then, in order to descend more quickly, instead of using the ladder, he slid down on one of the poles and, to make himself understandable through the noise, strained his voice to the limit as he yelled in the Traveller’s ear, “Do you understand the process? The Harrow is starting to write. When it’s finished with the first part of the script on the man’s back, the layer of cotton wool rolls and turns the body slowly onto its side to give the Harrow a new area. Meanwhile those parts lacerated by the inscription are lying on the cotton wool which, because it has been specially treated, immediately stops the bleeding and prepares the script for a further deepening. Here, as the body continues to rotate, prongs on the edge of the Harrow then pull the cotton wool from the wounds, throw it into the pit, and the Harrow goes to work again. In this way it keeps making the inscription deeper for twelve hours. For the first six hours the condemned man goes on living almost as before. He suffers nothing but pain. After two hours, the In the Penal Colony 8 felt is removed, for at that point the man has no more energy for screaming. Here at the head of the Bed warm rice pudding is put in this electrically heated bowl. From this the man, if he feels like it, can help himself to what he can lap up with his tongue. No one passes up this opportunity. I don’t know of a single one, and I have had a lot of experience. He first loses his pleasure in eating around the sixth hour. I usually kneel down at this point and observe the phenomenon. The man rarely swallows the last bit. He turns it around in his mouth and spits it into the pit. When he does that, I have to lean aside or else he’ll get me in the face. But how quiet the man becomes around the sixth hour! The most stupid of them begin to understand. It starts around the eyes and spreads out from there. A look that could tempt one to lie down under the Harrow. Nothing else happens. The man simply begins to decipher the inscription. He purses his lips, as if he is listening. You’ve seen that it’s not easy to figure out the inscription with your eyes, but our man deciphers it with his wounds. True, it takes a lot of work. It requires six hours to complete. But then the Harrow spits him right out and throws him into the pit, where he splashes down into the bloody water and cotton wool. Then the judgment is over, and we, the Soldier and I, quickly bury him.” The Traveller had leaned his ear towards the Officer and, with his hands in his coat pockets, was observing the machine at work. The Condemned Man was also watching, but without understanding. He bent forward a little and followed the moving needles, as the Soldier, after a signal from the Officer, cut through his shirt and trousers with a knife from the back, so that they fell off the Condemned Man. He wanted to grab the falling garments to cover his bare flesh, but the Soldier held him up and shook the last rags from him. The Officer turned the machine off, and in the silence which then ensued the Condemned Man was laid out under the Harrow. The chains were taken off and the straps fastened in their place. For the Condemned Man it seemed at first glance to signify almost a relief. And now the Harrow sunk down a stage lower, for the Condemned was a thin man. As the needle tips touched him, a shudder went over his skin. While the Soldier was busy with the right hand, the Condemned Man stretched out his left, with no sense of its direction. But it was pointing to where the Traveller was standing. The Officer kept looking at the Traveller from the side, without taking his eyes off him, as if he was trying to read from his face the impression he was getting of the execution, which he had now explained to him, at least superficially. The strap meant to hold the wrist ripped off. The Soldier probably had pulled on it too hard. The Soldier showed the Officer the torn-off piece of strap, wanting him to help. So the Officer went over to him and said, with his face turned towards the Traveller, “The machine is very complicated. Now and then something has to tear or break. One shouldn’t let that detract from one’s overall opinion. Anyway, we have an immediate replacement for the strap. I’ll use a chain—even though that will affect the sensitivity of the movements for the right arm.” And while he put the chain in place, he kept talking, “Our resources for maintaining the machine are very limited at the moment. Under the previous Commandant, I had free access to a cash box specially set aside for this purpose. There was a store room here in which all possible In the Penal Colony 9 replacement parts were kept. I admit I made almost extravagant use of it. I mean earlier, not now, as the New Commandant claims. For him everything serves only as a pretext to fight against the old arrangements. Now he keeps the cash box for machinery under his own control, and if I ask him for a new … © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI:10.1163/9789004376175_007 chapter 5 The Legibility of Legislation in Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” Siebe Bluijs Abstract This chapter investigates the readability of the law through an analysis of Franz Kafka’s story “In the Penal Colony” [orig.  1919]. In the story, a writing machine inscribes the verdict into the condemned person’s body until death ensues. Bluijs argues that the readability of the law is dependent on its ability to function as a form of writing as it has been theorized by Derrida:  the law needs to be able to break away from its origins in order to be productive. Look- ing at various instances where the law is read by the story’s characters (and their failure to do so because of the law’s intrinsic illegibility), Bluijs explores how different acts of reading expose the law’s dependency on the presence of its representatives. In Franz Kafka’s story “In the Penal Colony” (original title “In der Strafkolonie,” written in 1914 and published in German in 1919), a European traveler visits a penal colony.1 He is invited by an officer of the colony to witness the execution of a soldier, by way of which the former will illustrate the colony’s legal sys- tem. The soldier is condemned because he has dishonored his superiors. The condemned man has not been able to defend himself and does not even know on what grounds he has been convicted. According to the executing officer, it is unnecessary to explain the verdict to the soldier: “After all, he is going to learn it on his own body” (Kafka 40). The officer explains to the traveler that the condemned man will be subjected to a machine that will inscribe the ver- dict into the soldier’s body until death ensues, a procedure that will take about twelve hours in total. The officer explains that the content of the verdict be- comes known to the soldier as it is carried out: the condemned man will slowly 1 I would like to thank Isabel Capeloa Gil, Yra van Dijk, Yasco Horsman, Astrid van Weyenberg and Tessa de Zeeuw for their productive comments on earlier drafts and versions of this chapter. 84 Bluijs decipher the verdict through his wounds. The verdict and the execution thus coincide in the procedure of the machine. The sentence consists of a script of intersecting lines written on sheets that are then inserted into the machine. The sheets and the machine were designed by the officer’s mentor, the old commandant, who is no longer in power when the traveler arrives. The officer is the safe keeper of the old commandant’s legacy:  he holds on to the sheets and maintains the machine. His main concern throughout the story, however, is to convince the traveler that the colony’s legal system does not need the offi- cer’s presence in order to function. Kafka’s story has attracted an extensive amount of (scholarly) interpre- tations.2 Poststructuralist readings have particularly understood the writ- ing machine in “In the Penal Colony” as a literal manifestation of discur- sive mechanisms in society. Judith Butler, for example, has read the story in analo gy to Foucauldian biopolitics, where the body is a “blank page” on which “history” is being written (1989), whereas Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari have interpreted the colony’s machine as illustrative for their no- tion that power and the body form an assemblage (1986). This chapter wish- es to take up the connection between power structures and language at play in the story, by focusing on the function of the story’s law and its “Schrift” (meaning: “writing” or “inscription”). Kafka’s story concerns questions about the readability of the law. In what sense must the law be readable in order for it to function as a law? Who is able to be a reader with regards to the law? Is a legal system that is unreadable a just system? As I will aim to show, the readability of the law is dependent on its ability to function as a form of writing as it has been theorized by Derrida: the colony’s legal system needs to be able to break away from its origin in order to be productive. Any law, Derrida claims in “Before the Law,” that is not productive outside its own context, will inevitably fail to be meaningful. From this follows that if the law’s ability to function as a law is ultimately dependent on the position of the subject that reads the law (inside or outside the law’s context), the law stops functioning. Kafka’s story, I will show, provides an example of two positions that pertain to the readability of the law. The first is exemplified by the colony’s officer: as the representative of the colony’s legal system, he is part of the context of the law. The second position is actualized by the traveler. Coming from outside the context of the juridical order, his position is counterposed to that of the officer. By looking at different acts of reading 2 Apart from autobiographical and psychoanalytical readings, the story has been read from a theological framework (e.g. Steinberg 1976) and it has been understood as a reflection on the act of writing (e.g. Allen 2001). The Legibility of Legislation in Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony ” 85 and legibility in the story (of the sheets, the machine’s workings, the faces of the condemned), I will show that the two reading positions presented in the story are mutually exclusive. Writing Machines In Kafka’s story, the colony’s legal system is examined in its various materi- al manifestations by the story’s characters, who function as different kinds of readers at the various stages of the colony’s procedure. The condemned man is a reader of the law’s workings (at least according to the officer), as he deciphers the verdict through his wounds. The officer extends this ability to read the law to all the people that fall under the colony’s jurisdiction. The colony’s inhabi- tants are able, according to the officer, to read the verdict from the faces of the condemned persons. He reminiscences about older times when the colony’s people gathered round the machine to see the moment of comprehension of the verdict on the condemned person’s face: “How we all took in the expression of transfiguration from his martyred face, how we bathed our cheeks in the ra- diance of this justice finally achieved and already vanishing!” (48).3 Naturally, the officer functions as a reader as well; he is even able – without the use of the machine – to read the lines on the sheets with the verdicts written on them. In addition, he has a perfect understanding of the machine’s workings and, there- fore, has a more fundamental understanding of how the writing procedure is executed than others in the colony. Finally, the traveler is invited by the officer to act as a reader as well, but only on a basic level. The officer’s appeal to read the procedure is intended as proof of the pro- cedure’s intrinsic readability. The execution of the soldier is part of a legal or- der that is on the brink of extinction in the penal colony. In place of the old commandant, who installed the juridical order, is a new commandant who is not in favor of it. The officer and the machine are the last remnants of the old order, as the officer explains:  “This procedure and this execution, which you now have the opportunity to admire, have no open advocates in our colony any longer. I  am their only defender and at the same time the only one who defends the old commandant’s legacy” (47). Since the representatives of the procedure are dying out, the officer asks the traveler to acknowledge the fact that the legal procedures are at least principally legible for an outsider: “I have 3 As the footnote in the Norton Critical Edition of Kafka’s stories to this sentence points out, the word “radiance” is Schein in the German original, which could also mean “semblance,” “suggesting that this moment of alleged illumination is also a mere illusion” (48). 86 Bluijs a plan that can’t help but succeed. … I am not going to ask you to lie, not at all; you should just answer briefly, for example ‘Yes, I  saw the execution,’ or ‘Yes, I’ve heard all the explanations’ ” (51). The officer invites the traveler to read the procedure along with him by going through its workings one by one. He shows him the sheets and explains the components of the machine. Thus, the officer provides context that should make the principle of the law understandable to the traveler. All the traveler is asked to do is to endorse the assumption that this context exists, whether he agrees with the legal procedure or not. In fact, we learn at the beginning of the story that the traveler has objections to the procedure. His urge to interfere does not arise from an idea of human- ism: “the condemned man was a stranger to him, he was not a compatriot, and he certainly did not arouse pity” (46). Still, the traveler contemplates whether he has the power to stop the execution, going against what his function dic- tates, since “he was a traveler with the sole purpose of observing and by no means altering other people’s legal institutions. Here, however, the situation was very tempting” (46). In the end, he decides to carry out his role as an ob- server and does not actively interfere. Therefore, it seems that he is willing to act according to the officer’s wish and be an obedient reader of the colony’s legal system. In the colony, the officer explains, there are many opposing voices to the continuation of the old commandant’s rule. For the officer, such counter- discourses do not jeopardize the all- encompassing logic of the system. This becomes clear from the following passage in which he states: I’m not saying too much when I tell you that the organization of the en- tire penal colony is [the old commandant’s] work. We, his friends, already knew at the time of his death that the organization of the colony was so self- contained that his successor, even if he had a thousand new plans in his head, would not be able to alter a thing in the old order. (37) The officer believes in the endurance of the self- contained organization of the colony because, according to him, the legacy of the old commandant is con- tinued by the machine. He tries to convince the traveler that he is merely an advocate of the old commandant’s legacy and claims that the machine keeps the organization in effect, independently of any subjects vouching for its un- derlying principles: “In any case, the machine still works and is effective in its own way. It is effective even when it stands by itself in this valley” (49). For the officer, the old commandant has created a machine that functions on its own. In order to explain the relevance of this observation, I find it useful to turn to Derrida, who in his essay “Signature Event Context,” defines writing as The Legibility of Legislation in Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony ” 87 such: “To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a kind of machine that is in turn productive” (316). According to the officer, the old commandant has produced something – not coincidentally a writing machine – that functions as writing in the Derridean sense, “to the extent to which, governed by a code …, it is constituted in its identity as a mark, by its iterability in the absence of who- ever, and therefore ultimately in the absence of every empirically determin- able ‘subject’ ” (Derrida 1982: 315). In the officer’s view, even when there will no longer be anyone familiar with the machine’s origin, the machine will still be able to run by itself: it will be able to read the sheets and write the verdicts unto people’s bodies in the future, because it is governed by the “code” of the law. The machine, therefore, ensures the continuation of the colony’s legal system beyond the old commander’s or his representatives’ presence. The arrival of the foreign traveler puts the officer’s notion of the legal sys- tem’s durability to the test. A law can only be productive – it can only function as a law – , Derrida reasons, if its content has the ability to function in different contexts. As he writes:  “All writing … must be able to function in the radical absence of every empirically determined addressee in general. And this ab- sence is not a continuous modification of presence; it is a break in presence” (1982: 315– 16). It follows that, if a law is to function beyond one particular con- text, it should be able to function in the absence of someone who vouches for its meaning. The officer functions as a guarantee of presence of the old commandant’s legacy by substituting for his reign. The visitor, however, intro- duces the possibility of a true break in presence and invokes the questions of whether it is possible to convey the colony’s legal system’s rule of law to an outsider and of whether the legal system is or can be meaningful beyond its original context. Context and White Spaces The officer preserves the old commandant’s original designs of the executions. He tells the traveler:  “unfortunately I  cannot let you hold them; they are the most valuable things I own” (43). The sheets are valuable because they are an integral part of the colony’s legal system. But for the officer, they are also valu- able because they offer a historical and material link to the creator of the legal order: the old commandant. As I will show, this link to the historical creator of the law is a condition for the law to stay in effect. Derrida’s reading in “Before the Law” (1992) of the Kafka story with the same title (contained in The Trial) about “a man from the country” who wants to gain access to the law makes clear that a law that is dependent on stories of its 88 Bluijs origin cannot function as a law.4 In the story, the man’s entrance to the law is indefinitely delayed by an infinite number of gatekeepers. Derrida disputes the idea of the law’s origin when he states that: It seems that the law as such should never give rise to any story. To be invested with its categorical authority, the law must be without history, genesis, or any possible derivation. That would be the law of the law. … And when one tells stories on this subject, they can concern only circum- stances, events external to the law and, at best, the modes of its revela- tion. (1992: 191, emphasis in text) According to Derrida, stories that circumvent the law’s origin cannot give ac- cess to that which fundamentally organizes the law. It follows that the read- ability of such stories or myths obscures the law’s origin even further, leading Derrida to write that, perhaps, being able to read makes the law less accessible still. Reading a text might indeed reveal that it is untouchable, literally intangible, precisely because it is readable, and for the same reason unreadable to the extent to which the presence within it of a clear and graspable sense remains as hidden as its origin. Unreadability thus no longer opposes itself to readability. Perhaps man is the man from the country as long as he cannot read; or, if knowing how to read, he is still bound up in unreadability within that very thing which appears to yield itself to be read. He wants to see or touch the law, he wants to approach and “enter” it, because perhaps he does not know that the law is not to be seen or touched but deciphered. (1992: 197, emphasis in text) In “In the Penal Colony,” the officer tries to underline the law’s workings by providing stories of the law’s origin and by giving information about its con- text. Derrida’s reasoning explains why this information does not add to the readability of what the officer wants the traveler to be able to read in the first place, which is the law itself. In fact, these stories make the law less readable, since the emphasis on the law’s material manifestations (the sheets that can be seen and touched) obscures the true meaning of the law. The law is an 4 Derrida reads Kafka’s story as meta- literature: when he refers to the law, he is specifically re- ferring to the laws that govern literature. In my use of Derrida here, I take up the more literal, judicial meaning of the word “law.” The Legibility of Legislation in Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony ” 89 immaterial idea, and therefore it cannot be entered; instead, it is supposed to be deciphered. The difference between the two reading positions with regard to the law becomes clear when we look at the specific instances when the officer and the traveler try to read the contents of the sheets. The officer is able to read the sheets of the old commander; to the traveler, however, they are completely illegible: [H] e saw only labyrinthine lines intersecting at various points, covering the paper so thickly that it was an effort to detect the white spaces be- tween them. “Read it,” said the officer. “I can’t,” said the traveler. “But it’s clear,” said the officer. “It is very artistic,” said the traveler evasively, “but I cannot decipher it.” “Yes,” said the officer, laughed, and stuck the sheet back into the folder, “it’s not a primer of beautiful lettering for schoolchil- dren.” (Kafka 43) The marks on the paper do not compose a system of signs that is comprehensi- ble to the traveler. He interprets the verdict as an autonomous artwork – in the sense of a singular entity that needs to be interpreted as a whole, rather than as a sign system in which the various elements that make up the whole can be interpreted separately. The officer’s mocking remark that the sheet is not a primer for lettering is telling: the sheet and the verdict it represents cannot be regarded as something from which a general code can be distilled. The traveler is unable to make out where one mark begins and the other ends due to the lack of white spaces. This is significant because, according to Derrida, one of the minimal determinations of the classical philosophical concept of writing is the predicate that a “written sign carries with it a force of breaking with its context, that is, the set of presences which organize the moment of its inscription” (1982:  317). Derrida thus defines writing by its use of distinguishable elements that can be taken from the series of elements that make up the whole. The identification of these elements is made possible by the spaces between the elements: This force of rupture is due to the spacing which constitutes the written sign: the spacing which separates it from other elements of the internal contextual chain (the always open possibility of its extraction and graft- ing), but also from all the forms of a present referent (past or to come in the modified form of the present past or to come) that is objective or subjective. This spacing is not the simple negativity of a lack, but the emergence of the mark. (Derrida 1982: 317) 90 Bluijs Because the verdict in Kafka’s story lacks distinguishable elements that can be separated from the internal contextual chain, the emergence of the mark does not take place. The verdict also lacks “spacing” in the sense of a break from a present referent in time and space. According to Derrida, white space is not a negativity or a lack because it introduces difference within the internal contextual chain. With regard to the colony, the internal contextual chain of the law consists of the elements of the old commandant’s legacy: the sheets, the machine and its representative, the officer. The separation between these elements, howev- er, is made impossible by the architecture of the colony’s legal system. The offi- cer does not allow for the open possibility of the law, as he leaves no space for alternative narratives. The negation of a different context outside the internal contextual chain of the colony’s legal system is already present in the officer’s explanation of the totalizing terms of his judgment: I took down [the captain’s] statement and immediately added the judg- ment. Then I had the man put in chains. That was all very simple. If I had first summoned the man and interrogated him, it would only have led to confusion. He would have lied; if I had succeeded in refuting these lies, he would have substituted new lies for them, and so forth. (Kafka 41) If the captain had been able to defend himself, the officer would be confront- ed with the openness of a context that would undermine his legal procedure. The officer does not allow anyone besides himself to question or change the meaning of the verdict. This means that the verdict needs the presence of the officer to be readable, because its meaning cannot be conveyed by the verdict itself. When the officer shows the sheet to the traveler, he tries to cover up the structural lack of the law’s openness. He explains that the lack of white space on the sheet is due to the sheet’s composition. According to the officer, the sheet with the verdict is illegible for the initiated observer because ornaments have replaced white spaces: “The genuine script has to be surrounded by many, many ornaments; the real script encircles the body only in a narrow belt; the rest of the body is meant for adornments” (43). In principle, non- referential ornaments could take the place of white space in order to make referential graphemes (“the genuine script”) legible. For instance, one can imagine a text composed of the letters of the Latin alphabet in which all the spaces between words and lines are replaced by dots, drawings or non- Latin letters that is still completely legible for someone familiar with the Latin script. Likewise, the officer claims the condemned are able to distinguish between the ornaments The Legibility of Legislation in Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony ” 91 and the “genuine” script as they are both being inscribed onto their bodies. However, based on the composition of the sheet alone, it is impossible to de- termine whether this is the case. As he shows the sheets to the traveler, the authority to decide between referential signs and adornments resides with the officer. Later in the story, the officer shows another sheet to the traveler. He tries to convince him that the sheet contains referential signs (the “letters” of the verdict): It was impossible. Now the officer began to spell out the inscription let- ter for letter and then read it again in context. “It says, ‘Be just!’ ” he said once more; “now you can surely read it.” The traveler bent so low over the paper that the officer moved it farther away, fearing that it would be touched; the traveler said nothing more, true, but it was clear that he still had not been able to read it. “It says, ‘Be just!’ ” the officer repeated. “May- be,” said the traveler, “I believe that that’s what it says.” (54) Because the sentence “Be just!” only carries meaning within the context pro- vided and embodied by the officer, the repetition does not change or add sig- nificance. It lacks the capacity to be repeatable in different contexts. Therefore, it is an act of repetition, but not of “iterability.” Derrida shows that this concept of productive repetition is fundamental for a sign to function: Every sign, … can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. This citationality, duplication, or du- plicity, this iterability of the mark is not an accident or an anomaly, but is that (normal/ abnormal) without which a mark could no longer even have a so- called “normal” functioning. What would a mark be that one could not cite? And whose origin could not be lost on the way? (1982, 320– 21) The officer points out the law’s legibility  – he tries to convince the traveler that the verdict is governed by some code consisting of productive marks – by spelling out the letters and reading it again “in context.” This context, however, is decided and provided only by the officer. The sentence can therefore not break with its given context. The officer’s insistence on the legibility of the verdict is a final attempt to save what is dearest to him:  the belief that the legal procedure functions as a form of writing – the principle idea that the law is iterable. 92 Bluijs The Machine Escapes Notice The traveler’s inability to confirm that the system is readable for someone out- side the context of the legal system confronts the officer with the notion that the legal system is not durable. The traveler’s arrival indicates that the sheets and the workings of the machine are meaningless without someone who is connected to the system’s origin assigning meaning to them. The officer has been a proponent of a system that he believed existed beyond him and outside of his presence. Until the traveler visited the colony, the officer had believed he represented a just order. The traveler’s inability to function as a reader has lain bare that this is not the case. The officer therefore takes matters to their logical conclusion and carries out his own verdict. He takes a sheet with the verdict “Be just!” and asks the traveler to insert it into the machine as he straps himself to it, thus realizing his own death. The traveler understands why the officer subjects himself to the machine: He knew what would happen, true, but he had no right to stop the officer in any way. If the legal procedure to which the officer was devoted was really so near to being eliminated – possibly as a consequence of the trav- eler’s intervention, to which the latter, for his part, felt committed – then the officer was now acting quite correctly; the traveler would not have acted any differently in his place. (55) The traveler feels he has no right to stop the officer. Whereas he had initially decided not to interfere in the colony’s practices, he now realizes his presence has instigated a process that was already inscribed into the colony’s legal order. The order was only able to function within its own confined context. The trav- eler’s “intervention” laid bare his inability to become part of this context. As a consequence of his arrival, the legal system’s context is confronted with an out- side element that leads to its destruction since no such outside is allowed for.5 The traveler becomes aware of the logic of the juridical procedure when the consequences of his arrival on the island are taken to their logical conclusions. Paradoxically, the juridical order is only transparent for the traveler the mo- ment it comes into effect for the representative who guarantees its meaning. 5 The story’s narrative framework mirrors the traveler’s inability to enter the law. The under- stated and detached extradiegetic narrator does not provide access to the officer’s inner world (but the reader does gain access to the traveler’s considerations). Therefore, the reader remains, like the traveler, an outsider to the law in (and of ) the story, opening it up to endless possible interpretations. The Legibility of Legislation in Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony ” 93 That is to say, the machine carries out the juridical order in a readable way for the traveler when the officer merges with the machine. This moment of legi- bility is underlined when the machine initially runs perfectly: “The traveler … remembered that one of the scriber’s wheels was supposed to be squeaking; but everything was still, not the softest humming could be heard. As a result of this quiet operation, the … 1 The Lottery by Shirley Jackson The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th. but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner. The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands. Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix-- the villagers pronounced this name "Dellacroy"--eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys. The girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders at the boys, and the very small children rolled in the dust or clung to the hands of their older brothers or sisters. Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes. They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed. The women, wearing faded house dresses and sweaters, came shortly after their menfolk. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip as they went to join their husbands. Soon the women, standing by their husbands, began to call to their children, and the children came reluctantly, having to be called four or five times. Bobby Martin ducked under his mother's grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place between his father and his oldest brother. The lottery was conducted--as were the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program--by Mr. Summers, who had time and energy to devote to civic activities. He was a round-faced, jovial man and he ran the coal business, and people were sorry for him because he had no children and his wife was a scold. When he arrived in the square, carrying the black wooden box, there was a murmur of conversation among the villagers, and he waved and called, "Little late today, folks." The postmaster, Mr. Graves, followed him, carrying a three- legged stool, and the stool was put in the center of the square and Mr. Summers set the black box down on it. The villagers kept their distance, leaving a space between themselves and the stool, and when Mr. Summers said, "Some of you fellows want to give me a hand?" there was a hesitation before two men, Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, came forward to hold the box steady on the stool while Mr. Summers stirred up the papers inside it. 2 The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything being done. The black box grew shabbier each year: by now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained. Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box securely on the stool until Mr. Summers had stirred the papers thoroughly with his hand. Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful in having slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued, had been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep on growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more easily into the black box. The night before the lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of paper and put them in the box, and it was then taken to the safe of Mr. Summers' coal company and locked up until Mr. Summers was ready to take it to the square next morning. The rest of the year, the box was put way, sometimes one place, sometimes another; it had spent one year in Mr. Graves's barn and another year underfoot in the post office, and sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there. There was a great deal of fussing to be done before Mr. Summers declared the lottery open. There were the lists to make up--of heads of families, heads of households in each family, members of each household in each family. There was the proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the official of the lottery; at one time, some people remembered, there had been a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory, tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each year; some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to walk among the people, but years and years ago this part of the ritual had been allowed to lapse. There had been, also, a ritual salute, which the official of the lottery had had to use in addressing each person who came up to draw from the box, but this also had changed with time, until now it was felt necessary only for the official to speak to each person approaching. Mr. Summers was very good at all this; in his clean white shirt and blue jeans, with one hand resting carelessly on the black box, he seemed very proper and important as he talked interminably to Mr. Graves and the Martins. Just as Mr. Summers finally left off talking and turned to the assembled villagers, Mrs. Hutchinson came hurriedly along the path to the square, her sweater thrown over her shoulders, and slid into place in the back of the crowd. "Clean forgot what day it was," she said to Mrs. Delacroix, who stood next to her, and they both laughed softly. "Thought my old man was out back stacking wood," Mrs. Hutchinson went on. "and then I looked out the window and the kids 3 was gone, and then I remembered it was the twenty- seventh and came a-running." She dried her hands on her apron, and Mrs. Delacroix said, "You're in time, though. They're still talking away up there." Mrs. Hutchinson craned her neck to see through the crowd and found her husband and children standing near the front. She tapped Mrs. Delacroix on the arm as a farewell and began to make her way through the crowd. The people separated good-humoredly to let her through: two or three people said, in voices just loud enough to be heard across the crowd, "Here comes your, Missus, Hutchinson," and "Bill, she made it after all." Mrs. Hutchinson reached her husband, and Mr. Summers, who had been waiting, said cheerfully, "Thought we were going to have to get on without you, Tessie." Mrs. Hutchinson said, grinning, "Wouldn't have me leave m'dishes in the sink, now, would you. Joe?," and soft laughter ran through the crowd as the people stirred back into position after Mrs. Hutchinson's arrival. "Well, now." Mr. Summers said soberly, "guess we better get started, get this over with, so's we can go back to work. Anybody ain't here?" "Dunbar." several people said. "Dunbar. Dunbar." Mr. Summers consulted his list. "Clyde Dunbar." he said. "That's right. He's broke his leg, hasn't he? Who's drawing for him?" "Me, I guess," a woman said, and Mr. Summers turned to look at her. "Wife draws for her husband." Mr. Summers said. "Don't you have a grown boy to do it for you, Janey?" Although Mr. Summers and everyone else in the village knew the answer perfectly well, it was the business of the official of the lottery to ask such questions formally. Mr. Summers waited with an expression of polite interest while Mrs. Dunbar answered. "Horace's not but sixteen yet." Mrs. Dunbar said regretfully. "Guess I gotta fill in for the old man this year." "Right," Mr. Summers said. He made a note on the list he was holding. Then he asked, "Watson boy drawing this year?" A tall boy in the crowd raised his hand. "Here," he said. "I m drawing for my mother and me." He blinked his eyes nervously and ducked his head as several voices in the crowd said things like, "Good fellow, lad," and "Glad to see your mother's got a man to do it." "Well," Mr. Summers said, "guess that's everyone. Old Man Warner make it?" "Here," a voice said, and Mr. Summers nodded. A sudden hush fell on the crowd as Mr. Summers cleared his throat and looked at the list. "All ready?" he called. "Now, I'll read the names--heads of families first--and the men come up and take a paper out of the box. Keep the paper folded in your hand without looking at it until everyone has had a turn. Everything clear?" 4 The people had done it so many times that they only half listened to the directions: most of them were quiet, wetting their lips, not looking around. Then Mr. Summers raised one hand high and said, "Adams." A man disengaged himself from the crowd and came forward. "Hi, Steve," Mr. Summers said. and Mr. Adams said, "Hi, Joe." They grinned at one another humorlessly and nervously. Then Mr. Adams reached into the black box and took out a folded paper. He held it firmly by one corner as he turned and went hastily back to his place in the crowd, where he stood a little apart from his family, not looking down at his hand. "Allen," Mr. Summers said. "Anderson.... Bentham." "Seems like there's no time at all between lotteries any more," Mrs. Delacroix said to Mrs. Graves in the back row. "Seems like we got through with the last one only last week." "Time sure goes fast," Mrs. Graves said. "Clark.... Delacroix" "There goes my old man," Mrs. Delacroix said. She held her breath while her husband went forward. "Dunbar," Mr. Summers said, and Mrs. Dunbar went steadily to the box while one of the women said, "Go on, Janey," and another said, "There she goes." "We're next," Mrs. Graves said. She watched while Mr. Graves came around from the side of the box, greeted Mr. Summers gravely and selected a slip of paper from the box. By now, all through the crowd, there were men holding the small folded papers in their large hand, turning them over and over nervously. Mrs. Dunbar and her two sons stood together, Mrs. Dunbar holding the slip of paper. "Harburt.... Hutchinson." "Get up there, Bill," Mrs. Hutchinson said, and the people near her laughed. "Jones." "They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, "that over in the north village they're talking of giving up the lottery." Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. 5 There's always been a lottery," he added petulantly. "Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody." "Some places have already quit lotteries," Mrs. Adams said. "Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said stoutly. "Pack of young fools." "Martin." And Bobby Martin watched his father go forward. "Overdyke.... Percy." "I wish they'd hurry," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son. "I wish they'd hurry." "They're almost through," her son said. "You get ready to run-tell Dad," Mrs. Dunbar said. Mr. Summers called his own name and then stepped forward precisely and selected a slip from the box. Then he called, "Warner." "Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery," Old Man Warner said as he went through the crowd. "Seventy-seventh time." "Watson." The tall boy came awkwardly through the crowd. Someone said, "Don't be nervous, Jack," and Mr. Summers said, "Take your time, son." "Zanini." After that, there was a long pause, a breathless pause, until Mr. Summers, holding his slip of paper in the air, said, "All right, fellows." For a minute, no one moved, and then all the slips of paper were opened. Suddenly, all the women began to speak at once, saying, "Who is it?," "Who's got it?," "Is it the Dunbars?," "Is it the Watsons?" Then the voices began to say, "It's Hutchinson. It's Bill," "Bill Hutchinson's got it." "Go tell your father," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son. People began to look around to see the Hutchinsons. Bill Hutchinson was standing quietly, staring down at the paper in his hand. Suddenly, Tessie Hutchinson shouted to Mr. Summers, "You didn't give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn't fair!" "Be a good sport, Tessie," Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves said, "All of us took the same chance." "Shut up, Tessie," Bill Hutchinson said. "Well, everyone," Mr. Summers said, "that was done pretty fast, and now we've got to be hurrying a little more to get done in time." He consulted his next list. "Bill," he said, "you draw for the Hutchinson family. You got any other households in the Hutchinsons?" "There's Don and Eva," Mrs. Hutchinson yelled. "Make them take their chance!" "Daughters draw with their husbands' families, Tessie," Mr. Summers said gently. "You know that as well as anyone else." 6 "It wasn't fair," Tessie said. "I guess not, Joe," Bill Hutchinson said regretfully. "My daughter draws with her husband's family; that's only fair. And I've got no other family except the kids." "Then, as far as drawing for families is concerned, it's you," Mr. Summers said in explanation, "and as far as drawing for households is concerned, that's you, too, right?" "Right," Bill Hutchinson said. "How many kids, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked formally. "Three," Bill Hutchinson said. "There's Bill, Jr., and Nancy, and little Dave. And Tessie and me." "All right, then," Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you got their tickets back?" Mr. Graves nodded and held up the slips of paper. "Put them in the box, then," Mr. Summers directed. "Take Bill's and put it in." "I think we ought to start over," Mrs. Hutchinson said, as quietly as she could. "I tell you it wasn't fair. You didn't give him time enough to choose. Everybody saw that." Mr. Graves had selected the five slips and put them in the box. and he dropped all the papers but those onto the ground, where the breeze caught them and lifted them off. "Listen, everybody," Mrs. Hutchinson was saying to the people around her. "Ready, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked, and Bill Hutchinson, with one quick glance around at his wife and children, nodded. "Remember," Mr. Summers said, "take the slips and keep them folded until each person has taken one. Harry, you help little Dave." Mr. Graves took the hand of the little boy, who came willingly with him up to the box. "Take a paper out of the box, Davy," Mr. Summers said. Davy put his hand into the box and laughed. "Take just one paper," Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you hold it for him." Mr. Graves took the child's hand and removed the folded paper from the tight fist and held it while little Dave stood next to him and looked up at him wonderingly. "Nancy next," Mr. Summers said. Nancy was twelve, and her school friends breathed heavily as she went forward switching her skirt and took a slip daintily from the box. "Bill, Jr.," Mr. Summers said, and Billy, his face red and his feet overlarge, near knocked the box over as he got a paper out. "Tessie," Mr. Summers said. She hesitated for a minute, looking around defiantly, and then set her lips and went up to the box. She snatched a paper out and held it behind her. 7 "Bill," Mr. Summers said, and Bill Hutchinson reached into the box and felt around, bringing his hand out at last with the slip of paper in it. The crowd was quiet. A girl whispered, "I hope it's not Nancy," and the sound of the whisper reached the edges of the crowd. "It's not the way it used to be," Old Man Warner said clearly. "People ain't the way they used to be." "All right," Mr. Summers said. "Open the papers. Harry, you open little Dave's." Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper, and there was a general sigh through the crowd as he held it up and everyone could see that it was blank. Nancy and Bill, Jr., opened theirs at the same time and both beamed and laughed, turning around to the crowd and holding their slips of paper above their heads. "Tessie," Mr. Summers said. There was a pause, and then Mr. Summers looked at Bill Hutchinson, and Bill unfolded his paper and showed it. It was blank. "It's Tessie," Mr. Summers said, and his voice was hushed. "Show us her paper, Bill." Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal company office. Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd. "All right, folks." Mr. Summers said. "Let's finish quickly." Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box. Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. "Come on," she said. "Hurry up." Mr. Dunbar had large stones in both hands, and she said, gasping for breath. "I can't run at all. You'll have to go ahead, and I'll catch up with you." The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles. Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. "It isn't fair," she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. Old Man Warner was saying, "Come on, come on, everyone." Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him. "It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her. “In the Penal Colony” and “The Lottery” Find a passage from each story that comments on tradition, explain each and then explain the relationship between them.  “The Lottery” Quote __Write it out as it appears in the story:     __Explain the quote in terms of what it says about tradition:     “In the Penal Colony” Quote __Write it our as it appears in the story:     __Explain the quote in terms of what it says about tradition:     __Respond to one of your peers thoughtfully in one paragraph.