“A Hanging” by George Orwell

“A Hanging” by George Orwell was an amazing essay. It describes in great details how someone gets hanged. For the person being hanged, is a unique and most painful experience before their death; the walk toward the gallows, knowing you are going to die in just seconds is an in describable feeling that no one wants to experience and yet for the guards is a regular day at work. Those guards are so used to seeing people die everyday that for them is a boring and yet normal job.

In a hanging the author is taking one of many prisoners to the gallows without realizing they are humans just like him. As they were walking to the gallows, a dog came by and he was the most human like figure from all the men’s there; the dog was so happy that they decided to push him away to continue their boring job. The dog was just being useless and taking time from the guards’ job by bothering and jumping at the prisoner. When they got rip of the dog, the guards kept walking the prisoner into the gallows when a puddle was on the prisoner’s way; the prisoner decided to walk around it in which in didn’t matter because he was going to die anyways. In that moment that the prisoner avoid the puddle the author realized that he was human who had feelings, and knew that he was about to die. The author felt bad for the prisoner after so many guys he had killed before without guilt.

The part I didn’t like about this essay was that I thought he was going to stop the other guards from killing the prisoner, but he nothing to avoid the death of a human. The prisoner made a mistake but then again what human doesn’t make mistakes and plus that doesn’t give anyone the right to hanged anyone. The essay would have been better if the author would have said something to make the other guards think before doing something so profound. But nothing happened because the guard kept on walking, they hanged the guy and then they got back and laughed and joked about the death of other prisoners. The author didn’t even make a comment about how he felt and that sort of bother me because if it meant anything to him it would have brother him to stay silent and continue killing other prisoners; therefore, the author realized something but didn’t learned anything , so he took it for granted.