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Orwell is the essay’s author and narrator. Orwell narrates “A Hanging” without revealing whether the events of the morning actually took place. It’s true that the author was serving as a member of the Indian Imperial Police and likely saw executions, but Orwell famously refused to comment on whether “A Hanging” was a real experience or a fiction inspired by events that took place during his service. In the essay, Orwell is a young man working at a prison in Burma (present-day Myanmar). At the beginning of the piece, Orwell reports what he sees objectively, but after the dog breaks into the prison yard and the prisoner steps around the puddle, he begins to express thoughts on the cruelty of the execution taking place. He is moved by the humanity of the prisoner and feels decidedly uncomfortable when the superintendent delays the moment of death. In this way Orwell stresses the immorality of both colonialism and capital punishment. He feels relief when the prisoner is dead, though it is a relief tinted by guilt; his peers, it seems, share the feeling. Orwell then finds safety in communal feeling: amidst their discomfort, he and his fellow prison workers share horror stories about prisoners sentenced to death, and they laugh. Eventually, Orwell joins the guards, the superintendent, and Francis at the superintendent’s car, where they drink whisky together, both the colonizers and the indigenous men. It is not a moment of optimism, but, Orwell seems to suggest, one in which the men agree to ignore the horror of what has just occurred.
Orwell Quotes in A Hanging
The A Hanging quotes below are all either spoken by Orwell or refer to Orwell. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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A Hanging
Quotes
We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot for drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.
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[The guards] crowded very close about [the prisoner], with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening.
A dreadful thing had happened—a dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. It came bounding among us with a loud volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging its whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together. […] For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner and, jumping up, tried to lick his face.
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At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.
It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man.
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And then, when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out to his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!” not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog answered the sound with a whine.
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We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries—each cry another second of life; the same thought was in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise!
[Breakfast] seemed quite a homely, jolly scene, after the hanging. An enormous relief had come upon us now that the job was done. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily.
We all began laughing again. At that moment Francis’ anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.
Get the entire A Hanging LitChart as a printable PDF.
Orwell Quotes in A Hanging
The A Hanging quotes below are all either spoken by Orwell or refer to Orwell. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
A Hanging
Quotes
We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot for drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
[The guards] crowded very close about [the prisoner], with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening.
A dreadful thing had happened—a dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. It came bounding among us with a loud volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging its whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together. […] For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner and, jumping up, tried to lick his face.
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At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.
It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man.
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Explanation and Analysis:
And then, when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out to his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!” not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog answered the sound with a whine.
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Explanation and Analysis:
We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries—each cry another second of life; the same thought was in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise!
[Breakfast] seemed quite a homely, jolly scene, after the hanging. An enormous relief had come upon us now that the job was done. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily.
We all began laughing again. At that moment Francis’ anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.
