1. First things first - it's been a long, long time since I last read a book. Or more accurately, since I posted one. I've been working on a few different novels, obviously in no hurry, since January. This is just the third book I've finished this year. Hopefully this 120-page novella will jump-start my reading progress and I can finish the year with more than three books to my name. I can do better than I did these last five months, and I'll need to do better if I'm ever going to finish off this backlog.
2. This book is Victor Hugo's take on capital punishment. Growing up in early nineteenth century France, Hugo had seen his fair share of public beheadings during his formative years, and he eventually felt strongly opposed enough to the practice that he wrote a little story about it when he was 26 years old. As its title suggests, it's the account of a condemned prisoner waiting for his state-sanctioned execution. There are bits of action and conversation sprinkled in here and there, but it's largely introspective and stream-of-conscious in nature. All of this makes sense; Hugo is exploring the headspace of a man with a death sentence. What does he regret? What does he fear? What thoughts keep him occupied in general during his final days, hours, and minutes?
3. There's an effective use of time dilation at play here. The narrator is initially given six weeks to live, but before the book is halfway through he's already got just one week left. Before the book is three quarters through, the man's down to his final day. And the final ten or twenty pages of the book are devoted to his final hour or two. I thought this was a clever way to explore his mental state. If given a death sentence, I imagine I'd try not to think about it too much at first, perhaps even acting brave and defiant. But as time ticked down for me, I'd probably be overcome by emotion and overwhelmed with fear and sadness and all sorts of trepidation. That's how anxiety works, after all. It builds.
4. One of Hugo's major points seems to be that the cruelest aspect of a death sentence isn't the actual death, but the sentence itself - the mental and emotional toll to which it subjects a man. The guillotine is described as swift, efficient, and humane; the narrator never worries that he will suffer any physical pain. That's actually kind of incredible to think about, here in America in 2015, where we execute people with lethal injection cocktails that, when botched, can leave the condemned criminal in a great deal of physical anguish for hours on end before death arrives. For clarity, I understand that the guillotine was often botched too, and that the act of public executions seems particularly barbaric no matter how clean the kill itself is; it just amazes me that, in the last 200 years, we haven't really found a more humane way to kill people. (And no, killing prisoners in the first place is not humane.) I did some further reading, and France abolished the death penalty in the 1980s, but right up until it did, the guillotine was still used. Isn't that something? The last prisoner executed in France was killed in 1977, and he was killed with a guillotine. Imagine that!
5. Ultimately, I don't know how well Hugo's story works as a persuasive argument against capital punishment today. For one thing, the narrator's crimes are never discussed in any detail. He confesses to them and admits that his punishment is just, but he never attempts to apologize for them. He seems to have no remorse. In theory, this should work; blanket opposition to capital punishment should mean that the man's crimes are irrelevant, but by ignoring his crimes entirely, the narrator comes across as more of an abstract case than a man with a story to tell. I do oppose the death penalty, in case that wasn't clear in my last paragraph, but I never really felt any pity or empathy for the narrator's plight. Perhaps part of this was due to the preening, romantic tone in which the story was largely told(*). At any rate, whether or not the story succeeds at affecting a reader's political viewpoints, it's a quick and thought-provoking read and I'd say it's well worth the hour it takes to get through.
(*) Long-time blog readers are aware of my love-hate relationship with eighteenth century writing conventions, which, with all their poetic beauty, too often seem to recognize the reader as an audience. I mean, check this out: "Not ill? No truly, I am young, healthful, and strong; the blood flows freely in my veins; my limbs obey my will; I am robust in mind and body, constituted for a long life. Yes, all this is true; and yet, nevertheless, I have an illness, a fatal illness, an illness given by the hand of man!" There's a real and powerful sentiment in there, the idea of a long and healthy life, stolen - but it's buried underneath a layer of stage-like showmanship. That's not a broken, desperate, or anxious man; that's a man hamming up his own tragedy for the world to see. As a point of contrast, here's a similar sentiment from a condemned man in a twentieth century work of fiction from a different famous French author: "I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten since, in either case, other men will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably." Isn't that more profound? That's a man taking a sour grapes approach to life in general, trying to convince himself that his impending execution isn't a big deal. Your mileage may vary, but I prefer that starker and more transparent type of writing that didn't seem to exist in the romantic era of the nineteenth century. It just feels so much more genuine.
2. This book is Victor Hugo's take on capital punishment. Growing up in early nineteenth century France, Hugo had seen his fair share of public beheadings during his formative years, and he eventually felt strongly opposed enough to the practice that he wrote a little story about it when he was 26 years old. As its title suggests, it's the account of a condemned prisoner waiting for his state-sanctioned execution. There are bits of action and conversation sprinkled in here and there, but it's largely introspective and stream-of-conscious in nature. All of this makes sense; Hugo is exploring the headspace of a man with a death sentence. What does he regret? What does he fear? What thoughts keep him occupied in general during his final days, hours, and minutes?
3. There's an effective use of time dilation at play here. The narrator is initially given six weeks to live, but before the book is halfway through he's already got just one week left. Before the book is three quarters through, the man's down to his final day. And the final ten or twenty pages of the book are devoted to his final hour or two. I thought this was a clever way to explore his mental state. If given a death sentence, I imagine I'd try not to think about it too much at first, perhaps even acting brave and defiant. But as time ticked down for me, I'd probably be overcome by emotion and overwhelmed with fear and sadness and all sorts of trepidation. That's how anxiety works, after all. It builds.
4. One of Hugo's major points seems to be that the cruelest aspect of a death sentence isn't the actual death, but the sentence itself - the mental and emotional toll to which it subjects a man. The guillotine is described as swift, efficient, and humane; the narrator never worries that he will suffer any physical pain. That's actually kind of incredible to think about, here in America in 2015, where we execute people with lethal injection cocktails that, when botched, can leave the condemned criminal in a great deal of physical anguish for hours on end before death arrives. For clarity, I understand that the guillotine was often botched too, and that the act of public executions seems particularly barbaric no matter how clean the kill itself is; it just amazes me that, in the last 200 years, we haven't really found a more humane way to kill people. (And no, killing prisoners in the first place is not humane.) I did some further reading, and France abolished the death penalty in the 1980s, but right up until it did, the guillotine was still used. Isn't that something? The last prisoner executed in France was killed in 1977, and he was killed with a guillotine. Imagine that!
5. Ultimately, I don't know how well Hugo's story works as a persuasive argument against capital punishment today. For one thing, the narrator's crimes are never discussed in any detail. He confesses to them and admits that his punishment is just, but he never attempts to apologize for them. He seems to have no remorse. In theory, this should work; blanket opposition to capital punishment should mean that the man's crimes are irrelevant, but by ignoring his crimes entirely, the narrator comes across as more of an abstract case than a man with a story to tell. I do oppose the death penalty, in case that wasn't clear in my last paragraph, but I never really felt any pity or empathy for the narrator's plight. Perhaps part of this was due to the preening, romantic tone in which the story was largely told(*). At any rate, whether or not the story succeeds at affecting a reader's political viewpoints, it's a quick and thought-provoking read and I'd say it's well worth the hour it takes to get through.
(*) Long-time blog readers are aware of my love-hate relationship with eighteenth century writing conventions, which, with all their poetic beauty, too often seem to recognize the reader as an audience. I mean, check this out: "Not ill? No truly, I am young, healthful, and strong; the blood flows freely in my veins; my limbs obey my will; I am robust in mind and body, constituted for a long life. Yes, all this is true; and yet, nevertheless, I have an illness, a fatal illness, an illness given by the hand of man!" There's a real and powerful sentiment in there, the idea of a long and healthy life, stolen - but it's buried underneath a layer of stage-like showmanship. That's not a broken, desperate, or anxious man; that's a man hamming up his own tragedy for the world to see. As a point of contrast, here's a similar sentiment from a condemned man in a twentieth century work of fiction from a different famous French author: "I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten since, in either case, other men will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably." Isn't that more profound? That's a man taking a sour grapes approach to life in general, trying to convince himself that his impending execution isn't a big deal. Your mileage may vary, but I prefer that starker and more transparent type of writing that didn't seem to exist in the romantic era of the nineteenth century. It just feels so much more genuine.
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