were, de-construct the elements. What has seemed the "intended meaning" turns into something quite different, and the impression made by the story is at least partly rooted in the disconnect between expected meaning and the meaning the story resolves itself into.

"In the Penal Colony" is a bit different, but it as well turns into something that diverges from the ostensible meaning presented to us from the start. When the Officer realizes that his intended method of execution is no longer to be accepted, he finds himself guilty and executes himself. A more expected (though an even more horrible) result would have been that the Traveller would be arrested and killed for daring not to give his assent to the Officer's use of the torture-execution apparatus. These particulars, however, pale beside the bizarre nature of the story as a whole.

In some ways, Kafka's narratives are so different from normal realism that the very essence of them is one in which the text seems to contain its own contradiction. We are shown things that make sense in an outward form but inwardly are nonsensical. Or, we could turn this formulation on its head and say that on the "outside," his fiction is absurd, but the inner meaning is valid and is grasped by the reader.

A deconstructionist approach to literature identifies our response to such stories as one in which we understand them by identifying meanings apart from the writer's ostensible purpose. Yet given the subsequent history of the twentieth century, Kafka's fiction does not appear all that bizarre after all. It may be a truism to note that the horrors of "In the Penal Colony" are a prophecy of the Holocaust, but this merely proves the validity of the interpretation—given how obvious the truth of it is.

Probably it would be best to start our analysis by breaking down these stories into semiotic relationships as follows:

Signifier. One would think that Kafka himself, as the author, would be the signifier, but the term, as I understand it, is used in semiotics to designate the words or images that make up the narrative, or the manner in which the "sign" (the object of the story) is presented. In both "The Judgment" and "In the Penal Colony," Kafka gives us a low-key, matter-of-fact texturing of words that one would think might convey a harmless story without the dangerous and horrific results occurring here, especially in the latter story. In "The Judgment," the protagonist Georg's father suddenly freaks out and the relationship between father and son is laid bare in its dysfunctional nature. Similarly in "In the Penal Colony" the operation of the torture-and-death machine is methodically described as if it were an innocuous device for printing books, putting food in cans, or some other normal industrial process. That an actual person is being slowly tortured to death is the actual result. The act of signification is thus rendered as a form of irony.

Signified. The reality of what happens—violent familial conflict in the one case; sadistic enforcement of conformity by a governmental process in the other—is the actual object of the signifying, the "sign." But the signified is the ultimate theme or message of the story. What is it that Kafka is saying about human nature and the way familial relationships are conducted, or more broadly (and grimly) how those in power in despotic governments conduct themselves to their citizens? These questions, and the themes or messages implied by them, are arguably the objects of Kafka's signification.