"A Hanging" by George Orwell

People sometimes undergo difficult situations when they are forced to carry out orders by authority. George Orwell's "A Hanging" is a descriptive essay about capital punishment. The setting of this essay is placed in an early twentieth-century prison in Burma, a country ruled by the British Empire. Considering that George Orwell was an imperial police officer in Burma, it is highly probable that this essay is related to his own experience. The essay, presented through …

…of the characters in "A Hanging." This realization is that the lives of human beings are equally important, and the officers should be human beings beyond their duties as colonial officers. Works Cited: Orwell, George. "A Hanging." Literature for Compostion. Seventh Edition. Ed. Silvan Barnet, William Burto, William E. Cain. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005. 1215-1218 - - -. "Shooting an elephant." Online-Literature. The Literature Network. 27 Oct. 2005 <http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/887/>.