In addition, the solemn atmosphere and guilty tone just before the prisoner’s death where the guards had “gone grey like negative coffee” contrasted with the breakfast, where “everyone chattering gaily”, clearly portrays how the execution of capital punishment desensitizes these working below the government to the killing of fellow citizens. Furthermore, the contrast amongst Orwell’s belief about the “wrongness, of cutting a life short” and wanting to “kill him rapidly get it over” with, conveys how the guards’ occupation necessary them to suppress their moral values. The discernible differences among the imperious guards and the docile prisoners are ironic considering that some of the guards are of the very same ethnicity as those they are executing. Furthermore, the “puny wisp of a man” who was to be killed juxtaposed to the “fat Dravidian in a white drill suit” exemplifies the superiority of the guards more than the prisoners and the drastic disparity in living conditions. Firstly, Orwell’s comparison of the prisoners’ cells to “small animal cages”, which contained nothing at all but “a plank for a bed and a pot of drinking water”, illustrates the dehumanization of the convicts and the deplorable living circumstances they endured. Orwell illustrates how capital punishment can result in those executing it to deviate from ethical and moral behaviour by way of his use of contrast particularly amongst the prisoners and the guards’ physical look and living requirements. Due to his private encounter with this situation, Orwell conveys his opinion on these deleterious effects of capital punishment by means of his efficient use of contrast, irony and symbolism. Orwell contends that the implementation of capital punishment causes these working for the justice technique to stray from humanity and moral values by dehumanizing fellow citizens. This decay of moral judgement and desensitization to the killing of other human beings is epitomized in George Orwell’s essay, “A Hanging”, which revolves around his time spent enforcing capital punishment in Burma under British rule. This was often the case in Europe in the course of the 1900s when the death sentence was nonetheless a frequent type of punishment. The disregard for all ethical expectations of humanity can be a outcome of the stress to execute one’s job regardless of the consequences for those in one’s vicinity.

A hanging orwell pdf