A Hanging

In “A Hanging,” George Orwell uses a single event in colonial Burma to critique the death penalty and the corrupt tyranny of empire. Whether “A Hanging” should be considered fiction or autobiography is not entirely clear. As a member of the Imperial Police in Burma, Orwell would likely have witnessed hangings, although he is known to have told a friend that “A Hanging” was “just a story” (Crick, Bernard. George Orwell: A Life. Little Brown, 1980, p. 151). On the other hand, in The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), he writes, “I watched a man hanged once; it seemed to me worse than a thousand murders” (Orwell, George. Complete Works of George Orwell. Vol. 5, Secker & Warburg, p. 136). This statement could easily be read as referring to the narrator’s reaction to the execution in “A Hanging.”

Orwell’s biographer, Bernard Crick, concluded that “A Hanging” is “a compound of fact and fiction, honest in intent, true to experience but not necessarily truthful in detail” (Crick, Bernard. George Orwell: A Life. Little Brown, 1980, p. 318). This theory is supported by the critic James Wood, who suggests that the puddle episode in “A Hanging” may have been inspired by a passage in Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1867) in which a condemned man adjusts his blindfold moments before his execution (Wood, James. “How ‘War and Peace’ Works.” The New Yorker, November 19, 2007).

Regardless of whether the narrative persona is autobiographical, the shifting perspective, affiliations, and attitude of the first-person narrator play a key role in the text. Apart from his identity as an officer in the British Imperial Police, he remains anonymous. His lack of active participation in the execution suggests he is less experienced than his companions. In the opening section of the text, the narrator is a passive reporter, dispassionately describing events and reproducing direct speech. In this first part of the narrative, he clearly identifies himself with the organizers of the execution, seeing the condemned men through a colonial prism. For example, he views the prisoners “squatting” in their “cages” as little more than animals.

Despite the narrator’s dispassionate tone, his detailed observations highlight The Dehumanization of Colonized Subjects. The measurements of the prisoner’s cells, “about ten feet by ten” (Paragraph 1) convey the inhumane nature of their confinement. Meanwhile, the unnecessary force used on the prisoners is demonstrated by the six warders armed with guns and batons who restrain the “puny wisp of a man” in handcuffs and chains (Paragraph 2). The ethnically diverse company assembled for the execution illustrates the hierarchical nature of colonial power and oppression. The non-European colonial functionaries are keen to ingratiate themselves with their higher-ranking officers while asserting their power over the prisoners. The prisoners are debased and dehumanized by their jailers to stress their otherness. The condemned man remains anonymous, and readers do not learn the crime for which he is being punished.

In the central part of the text, the narrator’s perception shifts as he undergoes an epiphany. This pivotal moment is prompted by observing the condemned prisoner stepping aside to avoid a puddle. This instinctive human gesture, even in the face of imminent death, leads the narrator to recognize the prisoner’s humanity. Suddenly, he is aware that the prisoner’s body and mind are just as vital as his own as he walks toward the gallows. Consequently, he catalogs the intricate interplay of bodily functions that will preserve the prisoner’s life right until the moment when it is prematurely truncated. The Inhumanity of the Death Penalty is underscored as the narrator realizes “the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness” of taking another man’s life (Paragraph 10). However, after the execution, the narrator undergoes a kind of regression, losing his independent voice as he returns to his former affiliations. In the closing scene of the story, when the colonial party laughs and drinks, he seems to lose the ability to think for himself as he is absorbed back into the mechanism of empire.

Orwell’s essay presents the British Empire in a darkly absurdist light. The author’s satirical tone is reflected in the narrative’s structure. During the rising action (the lead-up to the execution), two events disrupt the smooth running of the event, thereby undermining the power and control of its organizers: the arrival of the dog and the prisoner’s incantation.

The unexpected arrival of the stray dog introduces an element of the absurd to the narrative, as it scatters the party and throws the whole proceedings into disarray. The group’s horror at the dog’s appearance is summarized by the narrator’s dramatic declaration that “a dreadful thing had happened” and “[e]veryone stood aghast” (Paragraph 6). The party’s warped values are underlined as they are appalled at the arrival of a loose dog yet normalize killing another human being. The dog further accentuates The Inhumanity of the Death Penalty through its behavior, which contrasts starkly with that of the assembled company. Its indiscriminate friendliness and affection toward everyone, including the prisoner, represents the antithesis of the inherent racism and prejudice of colonialism.

The condemned prisoner’s religious incantation before he dies is equally disquieting for the execution’s organizers. The single word repeatedly uttered by the prisoner, “Ram,” would have been unfamiliar and esoteric to most of Orwell’s English readership. The prisoner’s composure stands in ironic contrast to the growing discomfort of the execution party. Underscoring the theme of Rama and Hindu Ethics, the prisoner’s apparent serenity as he awaits death seems to elevate him to a higher spiritual plane than his companions.

The climax of the narrative—the prisoner’s execution—is deliberately anticlimactic. While time seems drawn out in the moments before the hanging, the event is described brutally swiftly: “There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had vanished, and the rope was twisting on itself” (Paragraph 15). The shocking suddenness of the act underlines how quickly and easily a human life can be taken.

In the falling action, the human characters are again unfavorably contrasted with the dog, who is the only one to recognize the enormity of the execution. The dog’s retreat to a corner after seeing the body indicates fear as it recognizes the cruelty of humanity. Meanwhile, the men drink whiskey and engage in tasteless humor. The behavior of the narrator and the other colonial functionaries reveals how the synthetic hierarchies and segregations of empire dehumanize those who live within them. In failing to recognize the value of the prisoner’s life, the execution party compromises and demeans its own humanity. The men are inured to violence and cruelty.

The prisoner’s aura of dignity is crudely compromised after his death by the Eurasian youth, who reveals that the condemned man was so frightened when his appeal was refused that he wet himself. The flippant manner in which this event is recounted, with the youth immediately changing the subject to brag about his new cigarette case, creates an intense sense of pathos. The young man seeks to further dehumanize the prisoner with this story. However, the depiction of the prisoner’s terror further humanizes him. The closing juxtaposition of the party laughing and drinking while the dead man is only “a hundred yards away” (Paragraph 24) evokes the brutality and injustice of British imperial rule.