Summary Of In The Penal Colony

Skip Hollandsworth candidly explores the subjects of juvenile crime and sentencing in the electronic long form newspaper article, “The Prisoner”. The purpose of the essay is to inform the reader about juvenile sentencing and to persuade the audience that there are clear problems with aspects of the U.S. prison system. The article is easily accessible to a large audience because it is online. Hollandsworth takes into account that his audience, mostly consisting of Texas Monthly readers, may already have pre-established notions about the topic, so he considers other sides while still supporting his argument. Edwin Debrow, a preteen member of the Crips, committed a murder when he was 12-years old and received a 27-year sentence through the

In this scene from Night, Elie Wiesel and his inmates are rushed out of their barracks at 5 A.M, forced to strip, and ordered run, naked and cold. Elie unveils that enslavement strips one of their personal identity leading to dehumanization. Wiesel observes “Mountains of prison garb” in the concentration camp. The use of hyperbole, exaggerating the amount of prison garb, emphasizes the high density of individuals in the camp. They are forced to wear the same uniform clothing, illustrating the destruction of individuality. The use of the word “prison” shows the birth of subjection. Wiesel also uses syntax to demonstrate the conformity of the camp, recalling the daily routine “Disinfection. Everybody soaked in it. Then came a hot shower. All

Night and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich express the potential horrors of humanity’s immense capacity for extreme cruelty. Both took place in mid-twentieth century Europe and exposed the hardships of life in forced-labor camps: Wiesel’s in various concentration camps, Solzhenitsyn’s in Gulags. It is important for human populations to be aware of these tragedies so as to not commit the same atrocities again; therefore, this essay will explore each with regards to shared or different themes included and the messages presented. Both of these books are important due to their influential and informative nature regarding the horrors of their respective historical times. Night by Elie Wiesel and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr

Survival in Auschwitz written by Primo Levi is a first-hand description of the atrocities which took place in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. The book provides an explicit depiction of camp life: the squalor, the insufficient food supply, the seemingly endless labour, cramped living space, and the barter-based economy which the prisoners lived. Levi through use of his simple yet powerful words outlined the motive behind Auschwitz, the tactical dehumanization and extermination of Jews. This paper will discuss experiences and reactions of Jews who labored in Auschwitz, and elaborate on the pre-Auschwitz experiences of Jews who were deported to Auschwitz and gassed to death on their arrival, which had not been

Glen Loury argues in his essay called “A Nation of Jailer” that the United States is a nation that follows a society that has been affected by racial bias. Loury claims that the people who are targeted by law are racial discriminated. Loury mainly talks about the “poorly educated black and Hispanic men who reside in large numbers in our great urban centers.” (1) Loury has made a clear and strong point. Loury shows his points in three main ways. Loury emphasizes his points by using ethos, logos, and pathos. Loury uses many well-known characters in his writing, and Loury uses strong phrases that impact the reader emotionally and questions to make sure the reader has some sort of connection to Loury’s evidence. Furthermore, Loury gives a lot

Prison is an institution for the confinement of persons convicted of criminal offenses. Throughout history, most societies have built places in which to hold persons accused of criminal acts pending some form of trial. The idea of confining persons after a trial as punishment for their crimes is relatively new.

“…Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same

For over centuries, the only form of punishment and discouragement for humans is through the prison system. Because of this, these humans or inmates, are sentenced to spend a significant part of their life in a confined, small room. With that being said, the prison life can leave a remarkable toll on the inmates life in many different categories. The first and arguably most important comes in the form of mental health. Living in prison with have a great impact on the psychological part of your life. For example, The prison life is a very much different way of life than what us “normal” humans are accustomed to living in our society. Once that inmate takes their first step inside their new society, their whole mindset on how to live and communicate changes. The inmate’s psychological beliefs about what is right and wrong are in questioned as well as everything else they learned in the outside world. In a way, prison is a never ending mind game you are playing against yourself with no chance of wining. Other than the mental aspect of prison, family plays a very important role in an inmate’s sentence. Family can be the “make it or break it” deal for a lot of inmates. It is often said that “when a person gets sentenced to prison, the whole family serves the sentence.” Well, for many inmates that is the exact case. While that prisoner serves their time behind bars, their family is on the outside waiting in anticipation for their loved ones to be released. In a way, the families

The criminalization of African Americans was further developed into the increased rate of incarceration after the abolishment of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment in 1863 outlawed slavery in America, stating that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (U.S. Constitution. Amend. XIII, sec.1) However, the amendment leaves out the exception that if a person is a criminal, he or she can be possibly used as a slave. The South seized the chance by replacing slavery by black codes, and as a part of the black codes, the Vagrancy laws forced freedman to do hard labor, and “if so-called

Humiliation, Pain and Death: The Execution of Criminals in New France,” is an article that puts

“Death wrapped itself around me till I was stifled.” Elie Wiesel was a young boy, only 15 years of age, when he encountered the tortures of the largest concentration camp, Auschwitz. Another Auschwitz survivor, Susan Pollack, experienced the horrors of her family being taken away right before her eyes (Connolly) .The life stories of Elie Wiesel and Susan Pollack are two examples showing the graveness of the mass butchery and abuse the Auschwitz prisoners endured, therefore portraying their immense joy when they were liberated by the Soviet soldiers on January 27,1945 (Wiesel 92).

“A Hanging” by George Orwell is an influential, autobiographical essay, in which the subject of capital punishment is powerfully examined. The essay is based on a prisoner’s execution in a Prisoner of War camp in Burma during the Second World War. In the essay, Orwell is a prison guard for the camp and carefully illustrates his views on capital punishment. The structure of the essay is of three distinct sections. These sections provide the reader with contrast and repetition, and are grounded in reality but with emphasis on the creative,

What was at issue was not whether the prison environment as too harsh or too aseptic, too primitive or too efficient, but its very materiality as an instrument and vector of power, it is this whole technology go power over the body that the technology of the ‘soul’ - that of the educationalist, psychologists and psychiatrists - fails either to conceal or compensate, for the simple reason that it is one of its tools. (TBOTC, Foucault, pg. 28)

A prisoner’s life consists of twenty-three hours per day in a tiny, empty concrete cell, with one hour of daily exercise in a small concrete swimming pool; they have no access to other inmates, and only rare contact with guards, who say nothing to them; they can see nothing of the outside world except a tiny sliver of sky. The death penalty as punishment is an unnecessary threat compared to the dullness of what prison life is like.

Today’s society is run by and thrives off capitalism, ruled by our government. Many things are kept surreptitious from us. The government feeds us lies to silence us and to force us conform to society’s customs, this is evident in the novel ‘The Trial.’ It depicts the way in which society is ruled by an autocratic hierarchy, which is kept secret from the working class. This is a metaphor for the Marxist ideology of the bourgeoisie exploiting the proletariat in a capitalist society. ‘The Trial’ by Franz Kafka was published in 1945 and follows the injustice of the main character Josef, who is arrested by two wardens, and prosecuted on unnamed charges. "Without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning." The nature of his crime is kept confined from him and the reader. Throughout the novel, Josef struggles ineffectively against an oppressive and autocratic court system, only to be abruptly executed, at the end of the novel. This essay will be exploring Josef’s character and the ways in which ‘The Trial’ is written in a Marxist perspective in depth, analysing how Josef struggles against the oppressive court system, adamant not to compromise his beliefs to conform to and suit society’s norms.