ESSAY CEMETERY

Observations and notes People have no names but have capitalized titles Squeaking foreshadows something Explaining the whole apparatus before showing how it works - what purpose does it serve? The namelessness is apparently to create impersonality and detachment but then there are sentences like "The condemned man is laid out on his stomach on the cotton wool" which is basically like The Condemned Man without caps- which makes it a little personal again. Interesting question: who is the commandant? He does everything. “Diagrams made by the Commandant himself?” asked the Traveler. “Then was he in his own person a combination of everything? Was he soldier, judge, engineer, chemist, and draftsman?” is he a metaphor for a ruler, or god? The pit- into it all the symbols of pain go (bloody water, blood-stained cotton wool). The Traveler's position as a stranger from without the culture: "Does he know his sentence?” “No,” said the Officer. He wished to get on with his expl...

The penal colony is an isolated valley (interestingly, the opposite of an island). A Traveler comes, out of politeness, to witness the execution of The Condemned, a soldier who disobeyed and insulted a superior. The Officer is eager to show the Traveler the apparatus, which is a huge fixture, but the Traveler is vaguely disinterested. The Officer does explain that the apparatus is made of three parts: "The one underneath is called the bed, the upper one is called the inscriber, and here in the middle, this moving part is called the harrow." Even though the explanations are in French, a language which the Condemned doesn't understand, the Condemned tries to garner clues about the apparatus. On the bed, the condemned is to be tied naked face down. There is a piece of felt, whose purpose is to silence the condemned, which the condemned must bite or he breaks his neck. The interest of the Traveler in the apparatus grows. The Traveler inquires about the nature of the punishmen...