A Rhetorical Precis: George Orwell's "A Hanging" (1931)

George Orwell Watercolor Portrait 
Fabrizio Cassetta, Dec. 2012

Orwell, George. “A Hanging.” Aldephi. London: O.Dag, 1931. Print.

“A Hanging” (August 1931) written by George Orwell is a highly descriptive essay concerning capital punishment that also examines primitive human nature as six tall Indian warders crowd around a condemned man as if they were “handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water”. Orwell endorses his compelling criticism of capital punishment through the convict’s actions before the execution, the lack of delicacy and sympathy of the superintendent, and the actions of all the wardens after the execution. His purpose is to imply that a second chance to redemption is undoubtedly taken away from the “condemned” and that capital punishment has an inauspicious effect on the executors themselves, making it ironic that killing one man who killed another man will ever bring them a sense of morality. Orwell serves to highlight the negativity in which others find severity in capital punishment. He selectively criticizes authorized men who can overturn capital convictions and make such decisions as to commit the “unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short”.

Orwell successfully portrays the unjustness of the execution through every character’s warped humanity, focusing on the gay conversations and laughter instead of mournful and guilty moods they should have been tormented with after the execution. Without the use of his characters, “The Hanging” would have polluted any real judgment in this narrative. His sympathy towards the subject also serves as an appeal for readers to realize how “destroying a healthy, conscious man” is cruel.