SOURCE: Fickert, Kurt J. “The Failed Epiphany in Kafka's ‘In der Strafkolonie.’” Germanic Notes and Reviews 32, no. 2 (fall 2001): 153-59.

In the following essay, Fickert investigates the dramatic epiphany that occurs in “In the Penal Colony” and compares it to other works by Kafka.

The literary device of the “epiphany” or moment of inner revelation has been put to use in the early work of Franz Kafka with remarkable subtlety and, in the case of his “In der Strafkolonie” (written in 1914, published in 1919), with dramatic intensity. Although Kafka makes no reference to the celebrated concept of the epiphany that James Joyce put to use in his autobiographical writings during the century's first decade, there can be no doubt that he was familiar with a similar trope developed contemporaneously in European literature. It, too, had its origin in the effort of authors to find the means to express truth in...