Capital Punishment and Sensitive Societal Issue

Punishment Punishment, Witness, and dehumanization are common in the public today illustrated in poems such as, Punishment by Seamus Heaney and Capital Punishment by Sherman Alexie. The poems give the origination a various perspectives based on the authors viewpoint, yet both authors seem to favor penalty. T herefore e reallyone in their liveness deserves to be punished based on the authors work or even a ravisher for one reason or a nonher to converse for something they have done or witness. These authors wanted to provide a strong feeling towards punishment whether or not the crime was minor or major.In Punishment the speaker was a witness to dehumanizing punishment of the bog women. In Capital Punishment the establish was a witness to a furious punishment. Even though both authors focused on diametrical types of punishment they both expressed how witnes loathsomenessg and dehumanization have a vital role in different situations. Can punishment and race have factors that can change one another? Can the ethnicity of a wretched effect the severity of the punishment bestowed upon them? The ethnicity of a criminal or witness can see to it how cruel and usual a punishment can be towards the criminal or witness.Witnessing is seeing an event, crime, or even an accident take place. In the poem the author talks about witnessing a slimy event. Punishment begins with a person possible the speaker or even the poet hanging with a snare around her neck and seems to be dead. The speaker seems like he could have witness the entire demolition. He describes the bog woman as, she was a barked sapling that is dug out oak- bone, brain firkin her shaved head like a stubble of black corn, her blindfold a soiled bandage, her noose a ring to store the memories of bonk (Heaney, 1157).Even though he describes her as a whipping boy why does the speaker not speak up for this cruel dehumanizing punishment. The punishment was so outrages that the audience felt her pain. Ho wever, the speaker premier(prenominal) says my poor scapegoat (Heaney, 1157), and we feel as if he feels the sorrow the readers do, shortly after he says, I almost turn in you (Heaney, 1157). With his participation of the punishment it leaves the audience believing that the woman deserves the punishment because of her past. Capital Punishment is told in first person, a cook is preparing a last meal for an Indian man.He says I sit here in the dark kitchen when they do it, meaning when they kill him, kill and add another definition of the give-and-take to dictionary (Alexie, 1164). The line I am not a witness is repeated by dint ofout the poem, it is state after Alexie addresses a sensitive societal issue. Topics such as capital punishment are very difficult for the cook to explain. The speaker of the poem is sympathetic with the condemned man and knows that the reason he is on death row is due to the color of his skin.After the narrator describes and tells the reader what he is t hinking and observing, he uses a line expression, I am not a witness symbolizing that the narrator can yet imagine but relate to what the Native American is going through. He changes from I am not a witness to I am a witness (Alexie, 1162) when the narrator tells the reader a score about how the society can hang two plurality but throw both people in one grave. The line symbolizes that two wrongs do not equal one right. The cook sympathies with the criminal because he knows that his punishment is only that sever because of his ethnicity. I am a witness is Alexies way of saying this type of punishment is happening and is something that cannot be ignored or overlooked. The author asks the question, who are we to judge? Who decides someones life is over? Alexie says at the end of the poem, If any of us stood for days on top of a unadulterated hill during an electrical storm then lightning would eventually strike us and wed have no mood for which of our sins were reduced to head lines and ash. (Alexie 1165). Alexie was trying to say no matter what, a sin is a sin, the terms in which the sins were committed are meaningless, and the bottom line is that a sin was committed.However, if we were killed for our actions how would we know if the condemned would make up for that sin or turn out for the worst? Both poems prove that the authors point of view of each punishment in the poem shows significance in the writers everyday life. Seamus Heaneys Punishment shows bitter love and can sanely symbolize the relationship of the love of his life. Sherman Alexies Capital Punishment symbolizes the punishment people experience especially through racial discrimination. In addition, by Alexie being Native American too, that proves he was making a logical argument about bitter punishment towards his culture.The ethnicity of a criminal or witness can determine how cruel and usual a punishment can be towards the criminal or witness. Work Cited Alexie, Sherman. Capital Punish ment. make Literature Matter An Anthology for Readers and Writers. By John Schilb and John Clifford. Boston Bedford/St. Martins, 2000. N. page. Print. Heaney, Seamus. Punishment. Making Literature Matter An Anthology for Readers and Writers. By John Schilb and John Clifford. Boston Bedford/St. Martins, 2000. 1156-157. Print.