Justice

There's this story by Franz Kafka called The Penal Colony. I was thinking about it tonight during class. We were asked to come up with a person, fiction or reality, who expresses a particular characteristic that we find impressive. So as usual when some stimuli enters my mind, I start thinking about Kafka. In The Penal Colony, this one guy runs all the executions on an island prison. Over the course of the story he realizes that his judicial integrity is corrupt and his method of execution is inhumane. So he straps himself into the old "It carves your crime into your body until you die" machine and has it carve "Be Just" into his flesh until he bleeds out his life. That's fucking hardcore! This guy accepts his fallibility and takes his own life to uphold some greater notion of justice. Kafka is some serious shit. So I was thinking about how that guy's persuit of justice is really impressive. I think I want to get a tattoo that says "Be Just". You know, just to remind me.