The Hero's Journey
Would anyone voluntarily sit in a room with a total stranger if the only thing they knew about him was that he had just brutally kidnapped, raped, and killed 2 teens? Think of how Sister Helen Prejean might have felt in her book Dead Man Walking. When Sister Helen Prejean decided to go to St. Thomas to help the poor, she was setting off on a journey that would change her life forever. Sister Helen will go through ridicule, taunting, and sneers trying to save a death-row inmate, Patrick Elmo Sonnier, from the electric chair, only to have to witness his execution; prompting her to fall into an abyss, from which she emerges and devotes her life to abolishing the death penalty. The first step in Sister Helen's journey is when Sister Helen steps through the threshold and first goes to meet Patrick Sonnier. One day in January of 1982, Chava Colon, a person from the Prison Coalition, asks Sister Helen to become a pen pal to a death-row inmate; not knowing what's in store for her, Sister Helen agrees. Soon after, she finds out the crime Elmo Patrick Sonnier and his b
Starting from Sister Helen's prayer of, Please, God, don't let [Pat] break down±(pg. Not many people can block out all criticism and ridicule to stand up for what they believe in. When Sister Helen acknowledges that [she] had not considered how difficult the issue of capital punishment [was]± and that [her] response had been far too simplistic,± (pg. When Sister Helen chooses to spend the rest of her life devoted to getting rid of the death penalty, she is reaching atonement and beginning her transformation. At Pat's funeral, a reporter asks Sister Helen if she was in love with Pat and she replies with, No, I loved Pat as a sister loves a brother, as Jesus taught us to love each other'± (pg. This brings her to the conclusion that although she will disagree with the perspective that the victim's family has on the death penalty, she will try to befriend them. However, due to her having experienced the cruelty and bias of the death penalty, she cannot give up her fight against the death penalty. 73) to her last farewell of I love you, too±(pg. Sister Helen's journey, starting from her abrupt calling, to her struggles and trials to her revelation and return, is just as much a hero's journey as Neo's journey in The Matrix. 65) she is undergoing her atonement and realization of what she has to do. However, her body and mind are so numb and full of shock that it takes her a while after she leaves the prison to fully absorb what she had just witnessed and vomits. Before, during, and after Pat's execution, Sister Helen feels guilty that she didn't do enough in comforting the victim's families. During this time, the victim's families, the LeBlancs and the Bourques, are dumbfounded to hear that there is a nun trying to protect a murderer from the death sentence, the man that killed their kids! However, the truth is that all Sister Helen wanted everyone to know was that she acknowledge[d] the evil Pat [had] done and [wanted to] make very clear that [she] in no way condone[d] his crime, but [she wanted] to show that [Pat was] not a monster but a human being like the rest of us ' that he deserve[d] punishment but not death.
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Acceptance Essays
