In the penal colony - something about that story by Franz Kafka

[KyriakosCH]

What i like about this story (one of the most violent he ever wrote) is that, in the end, the only person who was willing and able to operate the machine there was also its only supporter: the officer of the old order of the colony, a remnant of a dead past.
The machine was built by the previous head of the colony. It was supposed to carve onto the back of the person found guilty the exact paragraph of the law which described his crime. The guilty party in the story was nothing sort of a cretinous simpleton, who couldn't realize anything about the machine or why he was even there.
In the end... the officer operated the machine on his own self.

I think that Kafka might have meant that our own ideas tend to seem glorious to us, but carry less weight to others. Moreso a child's ideas and hopes of his/her enemies being punished, as in a colony under law- a law the child thinks of.
One would like to believe that the law exists with the same force for the others. In reality it is only something glowing for his own world of thought, so in the end the dreadful punishments he imagined can only really be practiced adequately if he forces them onto his own self. And - at least - in the story the officer never stops looking at the machine with respect and bewilderment, whereas the others only see a broken-down and miserable heap of trash in the middle of a desert.

-You can discuss if Kafka is cheerful or more cheerful