"The Penal Colony" it is one of the most dense and complex stories written by Franz Kafka. The story vert on on an ambivalence regarding the issue of guilt and justice. A series of symbols are scattered throughout the story, indeed, these symbols are attributable to the relationship between guilt and punishment. 

Moreover, the problem is the evaluation of guilt, from which the punishment derives. This evaluation given us by Kafka it is still contemporary, for instance, this book is a criticism to torture and death penalty. Practices which are still applied nowadays. In all of Kafka's work, in fact, the theme of guilt is characterized by a radical ambivalence: as an arbitrary and unjust attribution, and as an attribution that man has difficulty understanding, and which reveals a guilt which he tends to deny.