In the Penal Colony Characters

The Explorer: Audience to a Sick, Sad WorldThe first thing you might notice about the explorer is that, well, there's not a whole lot to notice about him. While we get colorful descriptions of the...

If the explorer is the character who watches the spectacle of the story, the officer is the person who makes a spectacle of himself. To call him emotional is an understatement. We're brought back t...

[…] a stupid-looking, wide-mouthed creature with bewildered hair and face […] in any case, the condemned man looked so like a submissive dog that one might have thought he could be left...

The soldier is a dull-witted fellow whose most distinct features are that he seems to fall asleep easily and that he's not very good at his job. He doesn't seem to know or care about what he's doin...

The old Commandant was the founder of the penal colony and the designer of the apparatus. According to the officer, he was kind of the bomb. He was responsible for everything about the colony, from...

With the death of the old Commandant, the new Commandant is the one running the show at the penal colony. As with the old Commandant, we only hear about him through the officer. We don't know too m...