Comparing The Death Penalty In In Cold Blood And A Hanging

Two Authors on The Death Penalty Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood, describes the story of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock and their involvement in a brutal murder in Holcomb, Kansas. In his story, Capote depicts his view on the death penalty by telling the heartbreaking murder of the Clutter family. On the other hand, George Orwell, author of A Hanging, reveals a descriptive piece in which he describes the scene of one man’s hanging in a jail yard located in Burma, Southeast Asia. The death penalty, while a controversial topic, shared a similar theme among both writers; how they went about expressing their opinions, greatly differs. While Capote and Orwell express the negative aspects of the death penalty, they both describe the situations

When describing the investigation, Capote mentions, “It would appear the Shultz’s investigation was rather one-sided, since it consisted of little more than an interview with Smith and Hickock”. When Capote mentions this, we can question whether or not there is a bias, but in the end, the motive behind this phrasing is to have the reader sympathize with the criminals. This is a significant contrast to how Orwell takes to his rhetorically driven essay, as Orwell depicts the main characters laughing off the hanging, and going about having drinks and thinking of everything else except the events that unfolded. Near the end of the essay, when the hanging is over, the main character remarks, “I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the superintendent grinned in a tolerant way”. Orwell’s essay shifts from a dreary and depressing scene, to everyone shrugging off what had happened before them and ignorantly going about their day. The emphasis on the ignorance of the people effectively convinces the reader that capital punishment isn’t taken as serious as it should be; a message Capote tried to add to his story, but was often overlooked by the emotional persuasive used to

In doing so, he profoundly gives the reader insight on the condition of the main characters, as well as the position the townspeople take. Capote uses descriptive details that he compares to human emotions that he utilizes to truly express the thoughts and body language of the characters, such as when he was talking to Dick, he mentions that, “Hickock’s uneven eyes turned toward a window in the visiting room; his face, puffy, pallid as a funeral lily, gleamed in the weak winter sunshine filtering through the bar-shrouded glass”. Throughout Orwell’s piece, he uses straight forward wording to express the details as they are, comparing them to closely-related objects. While he was describing the cell, he do so by writing, “Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for bars, like small animal cages”. Orwell needs very little figurative language to express the dreary scene witnessed prior (and during) a hanging. In the end, however, both utilize their descriptive language to convey the images and thoughts clearly into the reader’s