ELIZABETH DALTON
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gratification, a masterpiece of psychopathology, to perish because of
new, heterosexual interests?
Heterosexuality is connected in the story with eating. The new
Commandant's ladies stuff the condemned man with sugar candy
before the execution. The officer, indignant, explains that the
proper preparation for the machine is fasting. "'He has lived on
stinking fish his whole life long and now he has to eat sugar candy!'"
And indeed, it is after eating the candy that the condemned man
vomits. Pleasure offered by ladies, at first tempting, finally arouses
disgust.
The conflict in the colony between the ideas of Old and new
Commandants now becomes a conflict between the officer and the
explorer, and finally within the explorer himself. The officer as–
sumes that the explorer has been favorably impressed with the
machine and asks the explorer to intervene on his behalf. The ex–
plorer does not want to endorse the torture, yet throughout the of–
ficer's monologue he has been mute and evasive, seeming almost
mesmerized at times. His internal response has been equally
understated, even ambivalent.
The explorer considered the Harrow with a frown. This explana–
tion of the judicial procedure had not satisfied him . He had to re–
mind himself that his was in any case a penal colony where ex–
traordinary measures were needed and that military discipline
must be enforced to the last.
The explorer vacillates here, like an ego unsure of its own
strength and autonomy and half convinced by the moth-eaten ra–
tionalizations of a brutal superego. At last, when the officer requests
his help, the explorer must decide: "He did hesitate, for as long as it
took to draw one breath. At last, however, he said, as he had to:
'No.'" The ego must finally reject the insane cruelty of the superego.
"'Then the time has come,'" says the officer. He orders the con–
demned man released, puts into the Designer one of the Old Com–
mandant's inscriptions, and then undresses. Finally he breaks his
short sword and throws it into the waste pit.
If
self-castration is re–
quired to show loyalty and submission to the father, then the perfect
son is willing to do it.
The officer then lies down on the Bed . The beginning of this
self-execution is particularly interesting.
