Dead Man Walking Essay, Research Paper
Imagine yourself convicted for a offense and sentenced to decease. Imagine the hatred in the society towards you. What sort of a psyche would you hold? How would you experience about the idea cognizing when you are traveling to decease and in what manner? How will you respond? Who will assist you out? In the fresh Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean, was asked to match with Pat Sonnier, a adult male sentenced to decease by electric chair for the slaying of two teen-agers, which he did non perpetrate. Dead Man Walking, gives a traveling history of her religious journey as she became knowing about our system of capital penalty through her engagement in the lives and deceases of several convicted liquidators, their households, the households of their victims and the people whose occupation it is to transport out executings. Sister Helen brings a profound compassion to all the people she meets, reflecting on her experiences from an engaged Christian position. She helps the two decease row inmates by loving them even though society despises them. The psyche of a adult male is reached and articulated through the premise of those who love without judgement.
Sister Helen? s novel is a authoritative illustration of the pattern of attentive love, and of its effects. Throughout the novel, Sister Helen quotes Albert Camus extensively on opposition to the decease punishment. The psyche comes into articulation non through the subject of penalty, but through the pattern of love, a procedure that the decease punishment may originate. When a human being is being subjugated to the power of the province, he may come in into a spiritual functionary willing to be attentive to his demands for company. In that exchange lies the possibility of building? possibly the Reconstruction? of the psyche. Her description of the relationship that developed between herself, Patrick Sonnier, and Robert Willie, whom she is able to touch and love, is clear testimony to the look that is given thereby to the psyche. ? I have ne’er known existent love, ? Patrick Sonnier tells Sister Helen: ? ? It? s a shame a adult male has to come to prison to happen love. ? He looks up at [ her ] and says, ? Thankss for loving me? ? ( Prejean 82 ) . By loving Patrick Sonnier, Sister Helen brings him into consciousness of himself as a psyche, of his worth as a human being. That consciousness entitles a procedure of rectification, including the premise of incrimination for the wrong he has done. Sister Helen? s work, with the aid of psychologist Sharon Lamb? s new book, The Trouble with Blame, construes people as
? vehicles and representatives of moral values, ? and argues that a? right to be punished? ? coincides with the right to be? regarded as a duty agent? : ? ? to be punished? because we gave deserved it? is to be treated as human individual made in God? s image. ?
Perpetrators non merely merit incrimination but are worthy of it, in the fullest, most human sense of the word ( Lamb 185-186 ) .
The experience of decease includes a minute of aghast self-recognition in which the ego, the psyche, views the harm to its ain organic structure as if it were an other, the Other, separate. Sister Helen challenges the current gustatory sensation for public executings, which seems rooted in the desire to take part personally in the act of retribution. ( Consider, for case, the 100s of voluntaries who responded to Gary Gilmore? s petition for executing by firing squad. ) Sister Helen believes that the most convincing agencies of showing to the citizens of this state that capital penalty is incorrect are ocular. She argues that we are able to digest such violent deaths merely because we do non see them:
There is an amplification artifice traveling on here, a pathetic camouflage. Killing is a camouflaged? [ W ] biddy executings were public, it was non a reasonably sight? It was atrocious to see, and intriguing. And seeable. It was true? It was cruel. It was unusual. And it was evidently punishment. It was decease. Forcible, violent, premeditated decease ( Prejean 218 ) .
The condemned adult male himself observed this awful procedure in horror-stricken captivation. For Sister Helen to exemplify the dangers of workin
g on push flatboats, Robert Willie tells her that one time he had witnessed with his ain eyes a overseas telegram catch and whip about and cut a adult male in half. ? Right at the carpus, it cut him in two like a knife and his waist and legs dropped into the H2O, and he merely looked down and died. I think the daze killed him, watching half his organic structure bead into the H2O like that, ? ( Prejean 206 ) . What Sister Helen accomplishes in her conversation with both Patrick and Robert is a refusal of the separating regard, an insisting in connexion between two human existences who enable one another to see what it is they do. She asserts congruity between what the organic structure does, what the eyes see, what the head thinks, how the psyche responds. She insists that neither the condemned work forces, any of the authorities officials involved in executing, nor the citizens of this state divide how they act from what they see. Speaking, for case, with the caput of the Louisiana Department of Corrections, she has? a intuition that if this adult male were to? see with his ain eyes this killing laid bare, he? 500 quit, ? ( Prejean 105 ) . If Sister Helen did non love Robert Willie, she would non hold the conversation about what he saw and what it meant.
On his last walk, Patrick Sonnier asks one favour: ? ? Can Sister Helen touch my arm? ? ? It is the first clip, she reports, ? I have ne’er touched him? ( Prejean 92 ) . Having done so, she can non convey herself to watch his decease: ? I close my eyes and do non see? the executioner? make his work? ( Prejean 94 ) . Yet when she does look, and hears the warden announce the clip of decease, a minute of guilty acknowledgment occurs: ? His eyes go on to look into mine. He lowers his eyes, ? ( Prejean 94 ) . Therefore, witnessing her 2nd executing, Sister Helen insists that seeing is an act of connexion and of duty. Like the condemned adult male, she watches: ? Robert takes one more expression around the room at the universe he is go forthing. He looks at me and blink of an eyes, and so they? kill him. This clip I do non shut my eyes. I watch everything, ? ( Prejean 211 ) . Although Sister Helen holds Patrick Sonnier blameworthy, her ultimate undertaking is non one of the placing perpetrator: ? He seems to accept that he is responsible for what had happened even though he claims non to hold killed the adolescents? I suspend judgement. With the electric chair waiting, with decease stopping point like this, who the gunman was seems non the point. It is non merely the decease row inmate? s psyches that are defined by those who love without judgement, it is Sister Helen? s psyche. In the beginning of the novel, Sister Helen is worried about run intoing her decease row inmate. She is worried about what to state or how he will respond to her. However, by speaking to this adult male and holding a? relationship? with this adult male, she sees that he is human. She realizes that this adult male has feelings. This adult male can express joy, call, and even experience sorrow. Sister Helen feels she has done the right thing: aid these work forces get through all the emotions a decease row inmate must travel through and do them experience loved. In return, these work forces gave love back to Sister Helen and defined her psyche.
The psyche is reached, and brought to articulation, non through penalty, but through its extenuation, through the company of those who love without judgement. The psyche is brought into being through love, a pattern which we can reimburse what is threatened, what is lost, in the anguished experience of expecting executing. It is of import to measure up this statement in two ways. First, the menace of decease demands non to be the necessary requirement for such love. We can do it available to one another elsewhere at other times. The great bad luck of the lives of Patrick Sonnier and Robert Willie is that the love of Sister Helen, or the remainder of us, was non extended to them before they reached decease row. If it had, they might ne’er hold gone at that place. Second, the alternate family tree traced here is one that smacks strongly of privilege. If individuality is the consequence of single attention, if psyche is the merchandise of compassion, where lie the psyche of those who do non portion their peculiar histories with others, those who are non loved at all?
