THE LAST MOMENT OF TIME capital punishment in the essays by George Orwell, H. L. Mencken, and Norman Mailer was a necessary evil to deter crime. These authors incorporated the use of alcohol or drugs as mind-altering chemicals to relieve the pressures of the characters involved in death due to capital punishment. Chemicals such as drugs and alcohol can be used for the pleasure of relieving stress, a means to forget, or a way to subdue personal beliefs as the authors have illustrated. The pleasure of relieving stress in George Orwell’s essay ‘A Hanging’ was detailed by his thoughts written as one of the executioners.
This character drank alcohol to relieve the painful memories of escorting the prisoner to the gallows. The character would have rather saved the man from hanging when the author wrote ‘It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man’ (pg 89).
Orwell describes in detail how the condemned man ‘was not dying, he was alive just as we are alive all the organs of his body were working, bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming, all toiling away in solemn foolery.’ (pg 89).
The author continues to illustrate the character’s mental anguish when he says ‘he and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world, and in two minutes with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone, one mind less, one world less,’ (pg 89).
The Essay on Of Mice And Men Character Analysis
The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry. This statement explains a major theme in the novel Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. Everyone has dreams, and the characters in the novel are no different. But sometimes these dreams and aspirations can be shattered. The theme of broken dreams reoccurs in this novel through many characters, such as Lennie, George, Candy and Crooks. Lennie and ...
The essay concludes when the prison superintendent offers ‘ You’d better all come out and have a drink.’ (pg 91) The men involved ‘all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably.’ (pg 91) The drinking of alcohol was an attempt to blunt the reality of the death of a healthy person at the hands of the executioner.
The uses of mind-altering chemicals, H. L. Mencken’s essay ‘Hangings I have Known’ illustrates the repression of memory using a young journalist precisely eighteen years, ten months and sixteen days old (pg 92) when he witnesses his first execution as a reporter. He narrates the inebriated state of the ‘sheriff whose responsibility it was to spring the trap’.
(pg 92) The sheriff’s drinking was to diminish mental anguish he put on himself to a point where he became ‘ virtually helpless, the other sheriffs would help pull the trap, but the sheriff was quite unable to tie the knot, bind the candidate, or carry on with the other duties under his responsibility’. (pg 92) ‘After the hangings the sheriff was assisted out of the jail yard by his deputies, and departed at once for Atlantic City, where he dug in for a week of nightmare’ (pg 92).
The sheriff was written as a person not able to accept the act of capital punishment or his memories so he attempts to suppress them with alcohol. The final use of chemicals was by Gary Gilmore in Norman Mailer’s essay ‘Let’s Do It’ to suppress his personal beliefs.
Unable to say anything profound to the warden due to the amount of drugs and alcohol in his system, Gilmore says as dignified as he can ‘Let’s do it’ (pg 95).
The drugs and alcohol also protected others involved with the execution by sedating Gilmore as long as he could function and realize his death as the punishment to the crime he had committed. Drugs were not a form of celebration in Mailer’s essay. Gilmore used drugs and alcohol to hide his fear of death and oddly enough, to forgive those who performed his execution. ‘Dominus vobiscum’ (pg 95) Gilmore tells Father Meersman which says he forgives those who participated for he says ‘There will always be a Meersman’ (pg 95).
The Essay on Is The Death Penalty Cruel And Unusual Punishment
In order to determine whether the death penalty is to be considered cruel and unusual punishment, it is necessary to first define each word in order to get full understanding of the issue being assessed. According to the Merriam-Webster collegiate dictionary, cruel is defined as: disposed to inflict pain or suffering devoid of humane feelings. Unusual is defined as: not usual, uncommon, or rare. ...
Gary Gilmore accepts his death by giving forgiveness to those who do the killing but suppresses the fear of his death with the use of alcohol and drugs.
In the three essays a mind altering chemical was used by the authors so the characters involved with capital punishment can emotionally deal with the death of another human being. The authors by their essays indicate people view capital punishment as a humane subject needing a mind altering chemical to cope with its personal impact.
