Orwell uses the example of a hanging to show how human beings can become insensitive to the horror of taking life, through day-to-day repetition of murder. By using examples of the character's varying reactions at having to perform the unpleasant deed, he also explores how people deal with the concept of taking another's life. Particular care is taken by Orwell not to reveal the nature of the condemned man's crime, which places the focus of the piece on the action of taking the man's life, and not on the moral judgment of weather or not his punishment is fitting his crime. By doing this, Orwell succeeds in placing the reader's thought process squarely upon the issue at hand: How would I deal with the concept of having to watch another man die?
             Orwell starts this piece by giving a description of the environment in which the prisoners live, but intentionally stays away from describing any of them directly, instead, he lumps them all together with the phrase, "In some of them (cells) brown, silent men were squatting at the inner bars, their blankets draped around them". I feel that he has done this, in order to focus the tone of the story at the steady, day to day feel that what is about the happen is a regular occurrence, that nothing special is about to occur. As the story continues, the reader is given a purely physical description of the captive about the be executed, again, no clue is given about the state of his mind, or of what kind of man he may be.
             As the story continues, we are introduced to the first character the superintendent of the jail. The description of the superintendent is primarily noteworthy, because of his positioning from the rest of the group. He is standing a short distance from the rest of audience of the hanging, and seems to symbolize that he has crossed over a bridge of some sort; the hangings are of no consequence to him, just another duty to be performed in the course of his...