A Hanging

In “A Hanging”, Orwell has a sudden epiphany: the prisoner that he is escorting is going to die. He feels that it is wrong, even if the prisoner was sentenced to death. With Orwell’s phrasing he reminds us that the prisoner is fully functional, his “feet printed themselves on the wet gravel”, “muscles slid neatly into place”, and a “lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down”, but when he saw the prisoner avoid a puddle, just minutes before he was going to die he realized how wrong it is to “cut a life short, while it is in full tide.” He compares the man to himself and the rest of the guards, “he and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling and understanding the same world”. But soon one of them will be gone “one mind less, one world less.”

The prisoner was described as “a puny wisp of a man.” What harm could a person like that do to others? Yet it took 6 men to guard him and prepare him for his death. The tiny man did not resist, he just stood there as though he accepted his fate. The images Orwell puts into our imaginations are an intense reminder of what is going on in the story. For example, the first line of the story itself is very illustrated: “I was in Burma, a

-1-

Cohen-2

sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard.” With that line you have a very solemn image, instantly a