A Hanging

Humans all know there are consequences for every actions, but what about human

rights? In this essay A Hanging by George Orwell, is a good explanation of capital

punishment and human rights. It is from the writers view toward the capital punishment

and prisoners. The author, used to work in Burma as a British officer so he was inspired

from the job. In this essay he uses figurative languages in the short story including irony and

symbolism, but there is one that will be examined in this essay. Orwell uses symbolism in

his essay to clearly show his opinion about the capital punishment.

Symbolism has a strong opinion in A Hanging by George Orwell. Orwell first

mentioned the symbol The dog which came knows whence in line thirty-three. In

paragraph 6, he wrote For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before anyone could

stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to lick his face. From this

quote, Orwell tried to tell us that he started to feel conscience about the prisoner. The action

of the dog toward the prisoner can show that the prisoner is innocent and the same as other.

Not only the capital punishment is wrong to the prisoner, but it also human killing human

where we should not do it. People should not take other peoples life.

Next, the dog is mentioned again on the paragraph sixteen. The prisoner had

vanished,. I let go of the dog, and it galloped immediately to the back of the gallows; but

when it got there it stopped short, barked, and then retreated into the corner of the yard,

where it stood among the weeds, looking timorously out at us. This time, Orwell tried to

tell us that the conscience is not important and matter to them anymore because the prisoner

already died. The dog barked because it really want to stop the officer from killing our own
human kind. It can be assumed that the conscience had come to warn them, but they all

ignore it.

Another example that can consider the dog as a symbol is that It was large woolly

dog, half Airedale, half pariah. As you know Airedale is a kind dog but Pariah is fierce dog.

It conveys that in his mind there are two thoughts. First one is he wants to follow the rules

of punishment but the another one is he does not want to kill anyone. If that does not

important he will not include it on the paragraph because it is not necessary to tell the

species, so it must have meaning in it.

In conclusion, symbolism is obvious in Orwells short story. Every time the author

mentioned the dog, there must have the meaning inside of the word the conscience. It is

kind of confusion and notice something wrong inside of Orwells mind. The short story

makes us realize about human killing another human because he clearly explain the symbols

to the reader. This essay gives us symbols to show us his opinion that he does not agree with

the capital punishment, but he has to follow the rules.