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A Case Where Human Morality Hangs In The Balance. George

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A Case where Human Morality hangs in the balance George Orwell, one of the most perceptive writers of his age, portrays the inherent wrong of capital punishment in his short prose work, “A Hanging”. More specifically, Orwell’s story relates a dramatic experience of the writer while he was working in the Indian Imperial Police in 1920’s colonial Burma. That’s why John Rodden figures out how depressed he was there as he mentioned, “after he returned from what lie called ‘five wasted years’ as a policeman in British- occupied Burma, it is based on Blair-Orwells experience of working in the Indian Imperial Police” (qtd. in Rodden 70). The story recounts the dramatic scene of an unnamed prisoner in his last hour. It also …show more content…

Not just the prisoner were “The narrator reinforces the point by drawing attention to the prisoner’s humanity, as he accidentally urinates on hearing his death sentence” (qtd. in Rodden 72). This scenario of the prison indicates there was no room for humanity behind those prison walls. It also shows the injustice that capital punishment provides to innocent convicts as well. Throughout the story, the prisoner is presented by Orwell as an innocent one who became a victim of capital punishment. The author describes the prisoner as “a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films” (Orwell 99). His looks suggest to the reader that he is perhaps incapable of committing a capital crime.The reality of the situation at hand was sparked in one incident that the author observes. It is presented when the author was confused and views that “it is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide” (101). Those words visibly described how astonished he was when he saw a convict who even tries to escape the puddle was going to

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