Genre
Short story
Setting and Context
A penal colony on a hot, desolate island in the early 1900s; it seems to be controlled by a Western power.
Narrator and Point of View
Third-person omniscient narration
Tone and Mood
Tone: Calm, dispassionate, cerebral, erudite, understated
Mood: Shifts over time: uncomfortable, desolate, calm, confusing, foreboding
Protagonist and Antagonist
The Traveller is the protagonist; the Officer is the antagonist.
Major Conflict
The Traveller and the Officer have an essential conflict in their worldviews. The Officer wants the Traveller to give his approval of the continuing usage of the apparatus and its executionary power. Ultimately, the Traveller rejects this.
Climax
The Officer lies on the apparatus’s bed instead of the Condemned Man, revealing in one shocking moment that he is willing to die for his principles.
Foreshadowing
-The squeak of the wheel foreshadows the destruction to come
Understatement
-The Officer mentions that the Condemned Man eats stinky fish all his life; this phrase shows how poorly ordinary people live in the colony.
Allusions
Imagery
The author often uses imagery to show how much the penal colony differs from other places where the Explorer has already been. Using imagery, the author describes soldiers’ uniforms, the Apparatus and even the process of the execution.
See "Imagery" section for specifics.
Paradox
-The Officer claims that the executions are humane but compares the machine for execution with a pigsty.
-The Traveller is certain that the apparatus, and the system of justice in the penal colony in general, is inhumane but refuses to let the Condemned Man and Soldier escape the penal colony with him.
Parallelism
-The relationship between the Condemned Man and the Soldier parallels but distorts the relationship between the Traveller and the Officer; critic Richard T. Gray writes, "this relationship doubles but also distorts the basic dialectic between the two primary characters. If the Officer and the [Traveller] find no common ground, then the [Condemned Man] and Soldier discover almost nothing but intimate, immediate solidarity"
Metonymy and Synecdoche
-"Fanfares woke the entire camp." The camp is a synecdoche which denotes people who live in the colony.
-The ladies' handkerchiefs are metonymic devices for the ladies and their influence (see the article by Malynne Sternstein)
Personification
-In his descriptions and tone, the Officer treats the apparatus as if it is a human being.
