GEORGE ORWELL: 'A HANGING'



GEORGE ORWELL: "A HANGING"

BACKGROUND:

o 1903-1950, essayist, journalist, social critic;

o "searingly examines the relations between INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS and OPPRESSIVE GOVERNMENTS" in works, such as Animal Farm and 1984

PLOT:

o from 8AM to 8:08 (8 minutes), 40 yards,

o Burma, prison,

o narrator = English magistrate to witness with others and superintendent (impatient, moody/irritable, with a walking stick, "an army doctor, with a grey toothbrush mustache and a gruf voice") and head jailer (Francis, black, hissing lisp, "a fat Dravidian [mixed Indian race] in a white drill suit and gold spectacles"), hanging of puny Indian (with "thick, sprouting mustache" and " a shaven head and vague liquid eyes"; unresisting, incurious, lack of emotion/life; resolved to die?; pissed the floor when appeal denied)

o the walk to the gallows

▪ interrupted by a dog wanting to play

▪ hanged by a fellow Indian prisoner

▪ cries to his god ("Ram!") not for help, not a prayer, but preparation --> drives the witnesses crazy (now they can't wait for him to die)

▪ dog = becomes afraid of Man, realizes this is not a game

o afterwards:

▪ superintendent is no longer moody

▪ at breakfast: "it seemed quite a homely, jolly scene, afterthe hanging. An enormous relief had come upon us now that the job was done.. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily." -life goes on?

▪ Eurasian boy (mixed race): tells of dead prisoner's pissing out of fear; then breaks into his "new silver case" in "Classy European style"

▪ Francis' joke @ "refractory" prisoner & all laugh over a drink ("native and European alike")

*SETTING:

o BURMA (SE Asia), prison, English occupation (colonialism);

o "a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls..." (oppressive, dreary, trapped, dismal);

o prison cells = "like small animal cages" (men = animals, cruelty)

***EPIPHANY:

o when prisoners side-steps a puddle, narrator realizes that he is a human being, a sentient being, with organs working like his own...

o "It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man."

o "...the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide."

o "all toiling away in solemn foolery"

o "one mind less, one world less."

TONE:

a) journalistic, just reports what happened;

b)*IRONICAL TONE:

o Indians = prisoners, warders, servers, servants, hangmen

o 6 tall Indian warders to take this puny man to the gallows (overkill)

o rest of the prisoners can't eat until the prisoner is hanged (as if the superintendent was truly worried about the prisoners)

o dog thinks its a game; prisoner thinks dog is part of the formality

o condemned man avoids puddle: about to be hanged & is woried about wet feet

o this was a good hanging: no trouble, he went willingly, he died easily

o **THEY = the victims:

▪ the superintendent is impatient

▪ kill the man chanting Ram! to put THEM out of their misery "oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise!"

▪ the prisoner holding on to his cell, pulled by his legs: "'...think of all the pain and trouble you are causing to us!'"

o **END:

▪ all laughing at Francis' joke (even the narrator)

▪ nervous laughter??? (guilt, shame, own mortality, absurdity)

▪ IRONY:

• all are getting along "quite amicably" ( so why can't we all get along (w/o the violence, w/o oppression, w/o colonialism)

• natives are laughing at the death of one of their own, they = complicit in it (genocide)

• "The dead man was a hundred yards away." he's not laughing, he'd side with the "very troublesome" prisoner; he's dead; **they just took a man's life & they're laughing as if nothing has happened

*RHETORICAL STRATEGIES:

• description: sense details, metaphors/similes --> impression, imagery

• narration: direct quotes

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS:

• ??Why was he hanged? For what offense?

• anti-capital punishment

• Would the piece be more/less effective with a different tone?

• Would it be more/less effective if we knew why he was hanged?

• Why was that detail left out?

• Is it relevant? (no good reason to kill a man)

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