Blog Entry #1

In this writing, Turgenev portrays capital punishment as unnecessary and completely wrong. He shows the readers how dramatic the viewing of the execution was in full detail. Once Turgenev received the invitation to the execution, he had no idea what was in store for him and didn't want to seem like a coward. Throughout the entire execution, Turgenev felt remorse toward Tropmann, who was "guilty" of murder and sentenced to execution. Turgenev is stunned to see how many people came to view the execution and how much entertainment the community got out of the young man being killed. Turgenev is disgusted by seeing how a community could get so much joy out of another person's death. Turgenev wrote this to show how much of an emotional journey this was for him and to show others how shocked he was at others for getting joy out of the horrific thing that was taking place. Turgenev goes into so much detail of what being there felt like to him, and comparing the sound of the execution itself to the sound of "crashing waves". By doing so, it gives the reader a sense of almost being there and experiencing exactly what he experienced. Turgenev did this in order to spare readers the experience of actually going to watch one of these terrible things. He basically scares readers and shows them that you get nothing out of experiencing a man be killed, unless you're sick in the head. At the end of the piece, Turgenev asks, "capital punishment itself -- could it possibly be justified?" By asking this, readers see that he is against capital punishment. By asking if capital punishment could be justified, it shows that his position is that it can't be justified at all, and if so, he doesn't see how. Some may disagree and say that capital punishment is completely justified and feel that people that commit crimes, such as murder, should go through exactly what they put others through. My question is, how would this teach someone a lesson? By killing someone for killing someone else, this basically shows that the government feels that it's alright to commit murder because that's exactly what they're doing by sentencing someone to execution. If killing someone is illegal, then why can the government kill someone for doing something illegal? Execution is extremely barbaric and disgusting to me. I feel that being sentenced to "life in prison" is way more humane than sentencing someone to execution. Life in prison keeps the people the government wants away from society, away from society, without killing them or anything crazy. Execution is an extremely touchy subject and could be argued for years because everyone has their own opinion and in the end, everyone has a different opinion on these kinds of things.