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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Inevitable Brutality in Human Nature

This story asserts that humans are incapable of avoiding their bestial nature. The penal colony itself is a brutal place, meant to punish and debase those condemned to live there. The apparatus is simply a symbol of that brutality. The tone the Officer uses in describing the machine and the former Commandant is glowing and emotional, yet he is matter of fact and dispassionate when speaking about the condemned man and his so-called crime. Given free rein by a coldhearted Commandant, the Officer is able to embrace his own savagery and accept it as normal and even necessary. Even the Traveler is brutish as he fails to intervene on the condemned man’s behalf or the Officer’s. In the end, the Traveler fleeing the island shows that indifference and a failure to see the humanity of others is not confined to the Officer alone but is present in everyone.

The former Commandant’s gravestone signifies that even with change, brutality cannot be erased from the hearts of men. The inscription on the headstone tells a prophecy that the Commandant will return and take over the colony once more. Taken literally, the words are ridiculous. However, they are chilling when considered figuratively within the context of the story. Although the apparatus is broken and the Officer is dead, and although a new Commandant seems poised to make sweeping reforms in the colony, the inscription is foreboding. Despite any efforts to change the system, the brutality of humans dictates that there will be a return to the kind of savage system the Officer and his Commandant built and supported. Rather than the literal Commandant, what will rise again will be the hard-hearted rules and systems that come with the hunger for power. According to Kafka, the return to that kind of ideology is inevitable.

The Interrelationship of Outsiders and Insiders

The position of the Traveler as an outsider in the penal colony creates tension and explores a central theme. The Traveler is bored and disinterested when his interaction with the Officer begins. Even as the Officer explains the justice system at work in the colony and how those accused are immediately condemned with no opportunity to defend themselves, the Traveler feels no pressing need to intervene. He determines that, as an outsider, he has no authority or responsibility to even voice his opinion. Ironically, the fact that the Traveler is an outsider is what the new Commandant values the most. He wants the Traveler to witness and condemn the justice system and the apparatus. The Traveler’s otherness will serve the purpose of dismantling the old system. The Traveler’s unwillingness to do anything in the end ironically shows that he has no authority as an outsider, and his opinion should have no weight since he lacks any conviction. 

By contrast, the Officer experiences what it means to be an outsider for the first time. Under the former Commandant, the Officer was an insider, always in power and never needing to justify his actions. He enjoyed wielding power to huge crowds at the executions and seems bewildered by the dwindling support of his practices since the death of the old Commandant. He clings to the former Commandant’s writings, not even allowing anyone to touch the pages, because they are symbolic of his lost status as an insider. He alone possesses the pages, and he alone can read them. However, the fact that the Traveler cannot decipher the words is evidence that the Officer has become an outsider. 

The Old versus The New

There is a clear tension between old structures and practices and reformation to new structures and practices within the story. The Officer and his former Commandant represent the old positions and systems of power. A key part of the old system is dehumanization. The condemned man is described as a dumb dog too stupid to escape even if given the opportunity. The fact that the Officer is more interested in the apparatus and explaining its workings than he is with dignifying the condemned man shows how invested the Officer is in the old system. The Officer’s fawning devotion to the dead Commandant and his derision for the current Commandant are also indications of how unwilling he is to even consider any evolution into the new system being embraced around him.

The Officer’s scorn for the new Commandant and the system he’s apparently trying to build shows the stark differences between the old and new systems. Because he values the apparatus over human life, the Officer is horrified by the squeaking of the machine and the fact that the new Commandant refuses to supply not only basic parts to repair it but even a simple cloth to gag the condemned men who go into the apparatus. The Officer wants the Traveler to support him against changes in the way things are done, even forgetting himself in his passionate appeals by embracing the Traveler. His attempts to sway the Traveler are ironic since the Traveler comes from the West and represents new systems himself, much like the current Commandant. Ultimately, the destruction of the machine itself demonstrates how the old ways are gone, and the Officer’s death reveals how there is no place for him or his barbaric and rigid beliefs in the new system.

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