Ivan Turgenev wrote many great essays on capital punishment and the cruelness in society. "The Execution of Tropmann" is one of these types of writings. Turgenev found his inspiration for his pieces from watching his mother be cruel to the people she was surrounded with. Through the diction that Turgenev uses, he is able to express the viciousness and humility that is brought about from capital punishment. Turgenev uses the narrator to show more of a one sided argument about the unjustness of execution and other forms of punishment during that time.
By explaining the setting of the story, by using words such as "mournful expression" and "cold sweat." He is able to put a dreary tone to the start of the passage. By the end of the passage, words such as “unnecessary” and “senseless barbarism” shows a more angry tone. By starting with a more sad tone, he is able to show that an eye for an eye government is not justice.
Turgenev strongly feels that capital punishment is wrong. That by having a public execution, is humiliating and that killing a human being after they had killed someone is not justice, it is hypocrisy. Turgenev’s argument was very strong in the ways that he thought that the punishment methods were wrong. Turgenev expresses his views through the narrator that was invited to an execution and into the before activities of the execution. The narrator explains the roar of the crowd and explains that it is like the ocean, this comparison shows that the crowd and the noise seemed to be never ending, just like the ocean. The explanation of the crowd plays a sigificant role because it seems like a normal thing. People are there drinking and having fun, they don’t realize that they are just watching someone be killed, they think of it more as a social gathering than an execution. Through out the piece he refers to the execution as a show. That is what the crowd thought it to be, not a horrible killing of a human being that is just like them, but as a production on a stage . By including this metaphor in the piece, it enhances the reason why there was such a big crowd, they did not necessarily want a person to die, they wanted a show. They wanted to see justice served, whether it was death or not, they wanted education. Would it have been any different if there was no execution, and it was just a party?
For the most part Turgenev’s argument is very strong, he does have the weakness that he does not give all points of view. He strictly stays in one person, who is against it, and he does not write what the criminal thinks, what a spectator thinks or what a government person thinks. Just the one side of view is great, but by not showing the others, the reader can not fully understand the situation. One could be against capital punishment, like Turgenev, but they might not see that a person who was close to the criminal might be against it. The reader needs to see all views in order to realize if Tropmann really should have been executed and whether it was just to do it in front of a huge crowd, instead of in private.
Through out the piece he refers to the execution as a show. That is what the crowd thought it to be, not a horrible killing of a human being that is just like them, but as a production on a stage . By including this metaphor in the piece, it enhances the reason why there was such a big crowd, they did not necessarily want a person to die, they wanted a show. They wanted to see justice served, whether it was death or not, they wanted education.
Turgenev makes a great argument on the negativities of capital punishment, but if that is eliminated, then how will justice be served? Although public executions are a horrible thing, some sort of punishment that goes with the crime must be carried out. If some sort of justice is not served, then the crowd, the public, may go crazy if nothing happens. Chaos could break out.
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