410
PARTISAN REVIEW
It had been clear enough previously that he understood the
machine well, but now it was almost staggering to see how he
managed it and how it obeyed him. His hand had only to ap–
proach the Harrow for it to rise and sink several times till it was
adjusted to the right position for receiving him; he touched only
the edge of the Bed and already it was vibrating; the felt gag
came to meet his mouth, one could see that the officer was really
reluctant to take it but he shrank from it only a moment, soon he
submitted and received it.
The familiarity is that of a masturbatory ritual, in which
response anticipates stimulus, the Harrow rising to meet the ap–
proaching hand. The strange sequence then goes forward, at once
homosexual masturbatory fantasy and ordeal of guilt, crime and
punishment condensed into a single configuration. The machine
works this time without creaking: "Because it was working so silently
the machine simply escaped one's attention" -like the workings of
the unconscious. And then suddenly a comically horrible eruption
occurs. The lid of the Designer springs open and the cogwheels spill
out. The machine is breaking down. The Harrow is not writing, but
merely jabbing. "This was no exquisite torture such as the officer
desired," thinks the explorer, "this was plain murder." The suffering
inflicted by the sadistic superego is shown finally to be mere
pointless brutality , without transcendent meaning.
The officer chose to have written on his body "BE JUST," an
abstract and fundamental commandment on which the superego
itself might be founded. But there is no inscription. The explorer
looks at the face of the corpse, trying to find the "look of transfigura–
tion" that the officer expected from the moment of enlightenment.
But "no sign was visible of the promised redemption ." The officer's
forehead is pierced through by the great iron spike . The ritual of
guilt - an unconscious fantasy of homosexual torture rationalized in
religious and moral terms- is exposed for what it is: "plain murder."
The major action of the story is over now. The old order has
ended, the new Commandant will presumably institute his reforms.
Yet the last two pages, which form a sort of coda, have an am–
bivalent and unresolved quality that Kafka himself was dissatisfied
with . The explorer, accompanied by the condemned man and the
soldier, makes his way back to his boat, stopping en route at a
teahouse frequented by dock laborers . Under a table is a gravestone
with an inscription:
