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Foucault's Crime and Punish
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In Kafka's, "In the Penal Colony", he writes about a machine that delivers a very gruesome punishment that is along the lines of torture. In today's society, that type of punishment would be considered inhumane and immoral. Many years later, Michel Foucault wrote and published a book, Discipline and Punishment, which began by describing a very detailed murder that was considered a punishment. Kafka's objective was to show that people with limited knowledge will accept anything they are told. In terms of the people inhabiting the island, they knew no other type of judicial system, therefore they had no choice but the accept the terms of their judicial system and the Apparatus. Foucault then responded with Discipline and Punishment to show the evolution of punishment and things can change, and in one instance in as little as twenty years.
When comparing Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punishment and Kafka's "In the Penal Colony", there are many similarities but also many differences. The similarities are the aspect of punishing the body, punishment being a spectacle, and how punishment evolves into a private matter. In Kafka's story, prisoners are made to lie down on a bed and then go through 12 hours of torture of having their punishment tattooed onto their bodies. In Foucault's book, he explains a terrifying account of what was considered punishment a long time ago. I believe that Foucault begN his book that way because he wanted to shock the reader in their core values,...
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