The simple title, "A Hanging," lends a solemn, matter-of-fact tone and lack of emotion to the descriptions. The title itself implies no judgment, just as Orwell in this essay makes none explicit. However, one is left with little choice but to wonder at the shallowness of the people responsible for the hanging. The narrator sees clearly that the prisoner has a life "in full tide" (10) when the prisoner avoids a puddle. The narrator feels, as noted in paragraph 10, that somehow he is connected with all the men there, "together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world." But the larger issue, to Orwell, involves the morality of capital punishment and the colonial rule that imposed it, as well as the small value placed on one Indian life.
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