A Hanging

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1931

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Background

Essay Analysis

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Stray Dog

The motif of the stray dog represents The Inhumanity of the Death Penalty. The dog’s presence causes the solemn procession to the gallows to briefly collapse into farce as various members of the party make failed attempts to capture it. The fact that the dog is equally exuberant and affectionate in greeting the guards and the condemned prisoner undermines and disrupts the discriminatory hierarchies that justify the execution in progress. The dog recognizes all the members of the execution party as human beings and does not differentiate between them on the basis of race or social class.

The dog is described as large and shaggy, “half Airedale, half pariah” (Paragraph 6). The pariah dog is native to the Indian subcontinent, whereas the Airedale terrier originates from Yorkshire. The dog’s hybrid identity reflects the mixture of ethnicities and cultures brought together under British imperial command in George Orwell’s narrative. The dog’s troubled and fearful response to the prisoner’s death serves as an indictment of the execution and those who facilitated it. Its reaction suggests that even an animal instinctively understands that killing another being is wrong.

Restraints and Bindings

Orwell provides a detailed description of the excessive restraints applied to the passive, compliant prisoner:

Six tall Indian warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there (Paragraph 2).

This overzealous procedure and the paradoxical use of the adjective “caressing” generates irony but also pathos at the extreme impotence and vulnerability of the prisoner.

A parallelism emerges between the binding of the prisoner and the binding of the dog, who is also tied up with the narrator’s handkerchief. The dog’s futile whining and straining contrasts with the passive resignation of the prisoner and augments the levels of tension that build over the course of the essay. Although the narrator is not physically bound, the dog’s and prisoner’s constriction and impotence reflect the narrator’s predicament. He is increasingly disturbed by what is happening but trapped in a state of silent paralysis.

Time

Time is a symbol of mortality and the fragility of human life in the text. Consequently, references to time and timekeeping punctuate the essay. In the first half of the narrative, before the execution, Orwell creates an atmosphere of waiting and expectation. After a “bugle call, desolately thin” signals eight o’clock (Paragraph 3), the superintendent harangues the guards, as the execution is running late and the prisoners have not yet had their breakfast. Time is again referenced as the narrator follows the condemned man to the gallows, and estimates “in two minutes” the prisoner will be dead (Paragraph 10). Similarly, the prisoner’s prayer as he stands on the gallows is compared to a tolling bell, with each of his cries representing “another second of life” (Paragraph 13). These references combine to evoke the passing of time and the scarcity of the time remaining to the prisoner. A tension builds up between the desire of the execution party to hurry the procedure along and the persistent life force of the prisoner, who seeks to prolong and fully experience each moment. Once the prisoner has been hanged, the superintendent performs the final watch, noting the time of death is “eight minutes past eight” (Paragraph 16).