Milin Tanasarnsopon (Milly) 1201

A Hanging

George Orwell was one of the most famous English novelist, writer, and critic in 19th

century. On 25 June 1903, George Orwell was born in eastern India.When he was young, he was

studying the school in England. After that, he left his hometown and made a decision to join the

Indian Imperial Police in Burma. However, he quit and then became a writer. One year later, he

moved to Paris and was not really success as a writer. Thus, it pushed him into a job of servant.

He expressed this experience in his first book named Down and Out in Paris and London,

published in 1933, and then followed by his first novel called Burmese Days, published in

1934. Next, in 1945, he published a political tale set which is based on the Russian Revolution

called Animal Farm. This story made him more popular in the society and also made his

financial statement became stable for the first time in his life. Talking about one of his

masterpieces, A Hanging, it is the story about the execution of a prisoner by the hanging

method. The inspiration of this story came from his experience as an imperial police in Burma.

Moreover, in A Hanging, George Orwell uses irony, simile, and symbolism to show his support

in human right and his opposition towards capital punishment.

First of all, talking about one of the devices that is used the most in this story which is

irony. According to line 24, For Gods sake hurry up, Francis, he said irritably. The man ought

to have been dead by this time. Arent you ready yet? This dialogue is said in the story by an

army doctor. Therefore, it shows irony because, actually, the doctors should be the person who

heals and saves people from diseases and death the most. However, in the story, it seems like an
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army doctor supports the execution which is about killing people and he also wants a man or a

prisoner to be dead as soon as possible as well in order to save his time.

Secondly, simile is also used in the story as well to explain the feelings and the

atmosphere of the story. According to one of dialogues in the story, The Indians had gone grey

like bad coffee. From this dialogue, it expresses how the indian man as a prisoner feels like in

that moment which should be extremely stressful and depressed because he realizes that he is

going to be dead by the execution in any minutes very soon. Thus, this makes his face turns to a

grey color which seems like he is going to faint or sick.

Moreover, the other simile is used in order to describe the atmosphere, from dialogue in

the story, We were waiting outside of the condemned cell, a row of sheds fronted with double

bars, like small animal cages. This creates the picture in the readers heads that the way

prisoners are treated is like what have been done with animals in the quarantine. This issue

reflects on human right and the author felt sad for the prisoner a lot. He thought that every single

person, even a prisoner, should not have a condition like that at all because it definitely ruined

their human right.

Last of all, George Orwell revealed his feelings and his thought by using symbolism. He

symbolized a dog to represent himself as a policeman in the story who thinks that not only the

capital punishment is wrong and cruel but it is also unfair for the prisoners human right as well.

In the story, the behaviors and the actions of the dog will show his reaction towards the situation

in front of him in that moment. The story has a sentence, It was a large woolly dog, half

Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it pranced round us, and then before anyone could stop is it
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had made a dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to lick his face. From this sentence, the

dog moves energetically towards the prisoner and trying to lick his face which is a friendly

behavior. Hence, it implies that the conscience of the policeman does not want the prisoner to be

dead by the execution. Furthermore, Orwell wanted to describe that he wanted to against the

capital punishment and human nature killing other people as well.

In conclusion, Orwell used simile, irony, and symbolism to describe his disagreement

towards the ideas of human right and capital punishment. In my opinion, I agree with the author

because, nowadays, there are a lot of people who have to become prisoners even though they did

nothing wrong. All of them have to stay in an extremely bad condition and bad atmosphere as the

way animals are treated and no one seriously cares about helping them out. Worse than that,

some of them were judged to be dead by the capital punishment. This problem have been

continual for such a long time from generation to generation and no one pays attention about it.

Therefore, we all have to respond and realize more about this kind of problems and help each

other to get rid of it little by little. Then, the world will become more peaceful for sure.