Judicial Execution & Capital Punishment

In the story A Hanging wrote by George Orwell happened during the adolescence

stage of the author. In that moment of time, Great Britain was a conquering nation, which one

of the countries that they colonized was India.The author was joined with Indian imperial

police. Afterwards, Orwell was posted to Burma to work with the Indian warden in a prison.

Orwell was given a task that make him feels apologies to those who dies, which is execution.

However, Orwell and his fellow officers that worked in the prison have the similar thoughts

and questions about the laws. They wondered why those inmates must involve in execution.

Not only this, but also concerned that will the problems be solved by killing these prisoners.

Nevertheless, they knew that this is their work so they have no choices and cannot denied the

objective that gave by the government. A Hanging by George Orwell portrays a judicial

execution. Orwell is clearly opposed to capital punishment. However, capital punishment is

necessary, because it acts as an effective deterrent to murder.

In the present day, the rate of the crime keep increasing as well as the number of

victims that have never been decrease until this world begins to know a lot better to the

method called Capital Punishment or sometimes also known as execution. It is the

punishment for a serious crime, such as murder, drug trafficking, rape and etc. Moreover, this

topic has been put into the controversial situation. According to Kleinfeld (2016), As I argue

at length below, the key to understanding what capital punishment means is to see that it is

not just killing but killing as a penalty for wrongdoing. It is best interpreted as an expressive

claim to the effect that the very worst wrongs are so serious as to forfeit ones moral

humanity and, with it, the rights grounded in ones moral humanity, including the right to

life. This can demonstrate that the purpose of the execution is not directly to punish one
only, but it is also to let the other people know that the result of their action would be as same

or maybe worse than what they did.

To put it differently, people in nowadays society have main two different opinions.

First, they opposed against execution because they do not agree that when one did something

wrong, they will need to receive that guiltiness for the whole lifetime. While the other group

agree to the execution because they want to give the lessons to the person who did wrong like

the motto, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Further, people in society agreed that they

do not want to waste their money and resources with one who is not worth those resources.

Meanwhile, Orwell demonstrates his strongly idea of disagreement toward judicial

execution or normally known as capital punishment. Since, he thinks that capital punishment

is an act of inhumanity between human. By the way, he also comments that capital

punishment in any circumstances is morally wrong and no human has the right to take the life

of another. In detail, this means that Orwell thinks that human should not kill one another.

Even those people have done the worst crime ever, human does not have the rights to judge

the other person. Since every single person has to do at least one bad thing, this might created

the unfair situations for the prisoners.

Moreover, Family justice is one of urgent topic for victims family. 61 peoples out of

100 witnessed support the execution. Leo G. Barrile, one of the victims parents told the

murderer in court that I Forgive You, But You Must Die (Barrile, 2014) According to this

speech, this demonstrate that the anger from one of the victims parents and they want the

humanity right and justice for his sons death by vengeance.

 On the other hand, A Hanging also show that capital punishment is necessary. As it

mentioned, It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the

water. (p.1). This lines show that the narrator want to show the similarity between prisoners

behavior and fishs behavior. In this case, water can represent the ways or chances of prisoner

that still live in the freedom and continue to commit another crime at any time. Therefore, to

prevent from the repetition of the history, this can stop the rate of the crime refer to Adler

(2015), the rate of the crime in United States of America is ranked on the top of the world

ranking. After all, execution was introduced into the country. The research states that Nearly

every kind of lethal violence plummeted, though the dip in male-on-male intraracial crime

accounted for the overwhelming majority of the decrease. This record from Adlers research

emphasises that capital punishment is still necessary and usable to these cases. The

decreasing number of people who committed a crime can slightly make sure that at least

people are still afraid of death.

As a final point, George Orwell portrays a judicial execution and strongly opposed to

capital punishment. However, capital punishment is necessary for society because it is an

only ways to stop and deterrent to murderer. Altogether, this can displayed that the world

could not ignore or denied the method of capital punishment. In particular, it might not

reasonable to judge one another by the one who also done something wrong. However, the

fact that cannot denied is fault is fault. If one committed a crime, one needs to be responsible

to what they did.

 References:

Adler, J. S. (2015). Less Crime, More Punishment: Violence, Race, and Criminal

Justice in Early Twentieth-Century America. Journal Of American History, 102(1), 34-46.

doi:10.1093/jahist/jav173

Kleinfeld, J. (2016). Two Cultures of Punishment. Stanford Law Review, 68(5),

933-1036.

(Barrile, L. G. (2014, September 26).Victims & Offenders. Retrieved December 1,

2016, from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15564886.2014.925022).