A Hanging

U n i t3A H a n g i n g课文翻译Unit 3A HangingA HANGINGGeorge Orwell1. It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot for drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.Detailed Reading2. One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. Six tall Indian warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tightly to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening.3. Eight o'clock struck and a bugle call floated from the distant barracks. The superintendent of the jail, who was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the gravel with his stick, raised his head at the sound. "For God's sake hurry up, Francis," he said irritably. "The man ought to have been dead by this time. Aren't you ready yet?"4. Francis, the head jailer, a fat Dravidian in a white drill suit and gold spectacles, waved his black hand. "Yes sir, yes sir," he bubbled. "All is satisfactorily prepared. The hangman is waiting. We shall proceed."5. "Well, quick march, then. The prisoners can't get their breakfast till this job's over."6. We set out for the gallows. Two warders marched on either side of the prisoner, with their rifles at the slope; two others marched close against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed behind.7. It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.8. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we are alive. All the organs of his body were working -- bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming -- all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the gray walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned -- reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone -- one mind less, one world less.9. The gallows stood in a small yard. The hangman, a gray-haired convict in the white uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his machine. He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word from Francis the two warders, gripping the prisoner more closely than ever, half led half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up the ladder. Then the hangman climbed up and fixed the rope around the prisoner's neck.10. We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed a rough circle round the gallows. And then, when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out to his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of "Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!" not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell.11. The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes seemed to pass. The steady crying from the prisoner went on and on, "Ram! Ram! Ram!" never faltering for an instant. The superintendent, his head on his chest, was slowly poking the ground with his stick; perhaps he was counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed number -- fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed color. The Indians had gone gray like bad coffee, and one or two of the bayonets were wavering.12. Suddenly the superintendent made up his mind. Throwing up his head he made a swift motion with his stick. "Chalo!" he shouted almost fiercely.13. There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had vanished, and the rope was twisting on itself. We went round the gallows to inspect the prisoner's body. He was dangling with his toes pointing straight downward. Very slowly revolving, as dead as a stone.14. The superintendent reached out with his stick and poked the bare brown body; it oscillated slightly. "He's all right," said the superintendent. He backed out from under the gallows, and blew out a deep breath. The moody look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his wrist watch. "Eight minutes past eight. Well, that's all for this morning, thank God."15. The warders unfixed bayonets and marched away. We walked out of the gallows yard, past the condemned cells with their waiting prisoners, into the big central yard of the prison. The convicts were already receiving their breakfast. They squatted in long rows, each man holding a tin pannikin, while two warders with buckets march round ladling out rice; it seemed quite a homely, jolly scene, after the hanging. An enormous relief had come upon us now that the job was done. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily.16. The Eurasian boy walking beside me nodded toward the way we had come, with a knowing smile, "Do you know sir, our friend (he meant the dead man) when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor of his cell. From fright. Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you not admire my new silver case, sir? Classy European style."17. Several people laughed -- at what, nobody seemed certain.18. Francis was walking by the superintendent, talking garrulously, "Well, sir, all has passed off with the utmost satisfactoriness. It was all finished -- flick! Like that. It is not always so -- oah no! I have known cases where the doctor was obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull the prisoner's legs to ensure decease. Most disagreeable."19. "Wriggling about, eh? That's bad," said the superintendent.20. "Ach, sir, it is worse when they become refractory! One man, I recall, clung to the bars of his cage when we went to take him out. You will scarcely credit, sir, that it took six warders to dislodge him, three pulling at each leg."21. I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the superintendent grinned in a tolerant way. "You'd better all come and have a drink," he said quite genially. "I've got a bottle of whiskey in the car. We could do with it."22. We went through the big double gates of the prison into the road. "Pulling at his legs!" exclaimed a Burmese magistrate suddenly, and burst into a loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment Francis'anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.1. 那是发生在缅甸的事情。

a hanging课文概括《A Hanging》是乔治·奥威尔（George Orwell）的一篇短篇小说，讲述了一个被判绞刑的男子在等待死亡的过程中的心理变化。

故事情节简单，但奥威尔通过细腻的描写和深入的思考，展现了人类面对死亡时的真实反应和思考。

小说的主人公是一个被判绞刑的男子，名叫Nine Morning。

在等待死亡的过程中，他的内心经历了一系列的变化。

一开始，他感到恐惧和惊慌，无法接受即将到来的死亡。

他不断地回忆自己的过去，思考自己的罪行是否值得这样的惩罚。

他感到自己的人生被彻底毁掉了，无法挽回。

随着时间的推移，Nine Morning开始逐渐接受自己的命运。

他开始思考死亡的本质和人生的意义。

他回忆起自己曾经不珍惜生命，对人生充满了冷漠和厌倦。

但现在，当他面对死亡时，他开始感受到生命的珍贵和意义。

他开始感到自己的人生还有未完成的事情，还有许多想做的事情没有做。

在最后的时刻，Nine Morning感到自己与周围的世界融为一体。

他感到自己仿佛融入了整个宇宙，与万物相连。

他感到自己已经超越了生死的界限，达到了一个超越世俗的境界。

在这个境界中，他感到自己的人生已经得到了救赎，他的罪行已经被原谅。

乔治·奥威尔通过《A Hanging》这篇小说，探讨了人类面对死亡时的心理变化和思考。

他通过Nine Morning的故事，展现了人类面对死亡时的真实反应和思考。

他认为，人类面对死亡时，会经历一系列的心理变化，包括恐惧、愤怒、悲伤、接受和超越。

同时，他认为，只有通过接受和超越死亡，人类才能真正地理解生命的本质和意义。

此外，《A Hanging》还反映了乔治·奥威尔对英国殖民统治的批判态度。

在小说中，被判绞刑的男子Nine Morning被描述为一个孤独、无助的个体，而整个绞刑过程也被描绘得十分残酷和不人道。

乔治·奥威尔通过这些描写，揭示了英国在殖民时期的统治手段的残酷和不公，呼吁人们反思这种不人道的统治方式。

Unit 3A HangingConsolidation ActivitiesI. Text Comprehension1. Decide which of the following best states the author's purpose BA.To criticize the reaction of the on-lookers during a hanging.B.To present his humanistic view on capital punishment.C.To describe the process of an execution.D.To show sympathy to the man that had been hanged.II. Judge, according to the text, whether the following statements are true or false.1). Each cell, ten feet by ten in size, was barely furnished except for a plank bed and a pot for drinking water. [T]2). According to the superintendent, the prisoner should be executed at 8 o'clock. [T]3). A group of prisoners were walking towards the gallows to be hanged. [F]4). When the noose was fixed around the prisoner's neck, he emitted urgent and fearful cries for help. [F]5). As the superintendent was counting the prisoner's cries to a fixed number, all on the spot, including the Indian warders, were terribly upset. [T]6). We went round the gallows to make sure that the hanged prisoner was actually dead. [T]7). From what the Eurasian boy said, the hanged man was an undaunted man. [F]II. Writing StrategiesThis text is a piece of dynamic or descriptive narration, telling us a true story about the hanging of a convict in Burma. The narrative text first presents a general description of the poor, simple living conditions of the condemned men before they were put to death on the gallows. Next, it focuses on a dynamic and specific description of how a condemned man, a Hindu, was guarded and escorted to the gallows and how he was hanged. Then, some anecdotes are presented and some events described, which provide food for thought. Evidently, the events are organized mainly in the order of their occurrence, following the natural time sequence. It is to be noted that Paragraphs 9-14 make up the climax of the story.Also, it is not to be overlooked that the first-person narration is adopted, whichrenders the events described or narrated more vivid, objective and believable, and which makes it possible and convenient for the narrator to put across his own thoughts and feelings in the process of narration. Besides, it is worth our attention that the beginning of this narrative story is well connected with its conclusion.The questions below are to be answered:1. Do you agree that the narrative story is full of dynamic descriptions? If you do, provide examples to support your viewpoint.→Yes, I do. The story is so full of dynamic verbs that more than 90% of the sentences contain one or two, or even more action verbs. Obvious examples are found in Paragraphs 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15.2. Which paragraphs contain flashbacks?→ Flashbacks are found in Paragraphs 16, 18, and 20.3. What do you know about the advantages of the first-person narration?→The employment of the first person narration renders the events described or the plots narrated more vivid, objective and believable, and makes it possible and convenient for the narrator to express or demonstrate his own thoughts or psychological activities in the process of narration.4. How is the beginning of the story associated with its conclusion?→Both the beginning and the conclusion of the narrative story touch on or briefly describe the hard life and tragic fate of the condemned prisoners.III. Language Work1. Explain the underlined part in each sentence in your own words.1.These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.→ who were scheduled to be hanged2. He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes.→ who was a small, thin, and weak man3. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip.→ holding him firmly and continuously in a careful manner4. Two warders marched on either side of the prisoner, with their rifles at the slope.→carrying rifles that tilted over their shoulders5. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place.→ his muscles appeared to be functioning normally6. …and in tw o minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone -- one mind less, one world less.we will lose a man who can also think and reason like us, and who is also a unique individual like each of us2. Fill in each blank with one of the two words from each pair in their appropriate forms and note the difference of meaning between them.vibrate oscillate1).More and more people believe that the common stocks oscillate in a predictablycyclical way.2).Half sleeping, she could feel the train vibrate with the monotonous roll of wheelsalong the track.3).He will never forget his first experiences as a total stranger in the big city, those yearswhich oscillated between hope and despair.4).When you play a note on any guitar, you create an overtone series, and those overtoneseries come about through the string vibrating in properly divided lengths.motion movement1).In the middle of the blaze stands a tall dead pine, which caught a lightening boltduring last night's thunderstorm and set the fire in motion.2).The jury watched the tape dozens of times in slow motion and in freeze frame.3).The movement of the enemy troops in the border area has been closely monitored.4).The labour movement has been assailed by accusations of sexism and demands forchange from feministsinspect examine1).They don't normally give any advance notice about which building they're going toinspect for the annual quality assessment.2).The aim of the course is to examine certain philosophical issues which arise frommodern linguistics.3).If it is our contention that the weapons inspectors have all the authority they neednow to inspect those sites, do you think those sites should be inspected now?4).Here is an opportunity for students to examine the concepts of what it is to be anenvironmentalist, and to examine their own behaviour in this context.dangle suspend1).Once inside the hall, we could see chandeliers suspended on heavy chains from theceiling.2).The belt of her coat dangled in the mud.3).Joan suggested we suspend a rope from the garage roof to secure the door fromfalling.4).A gold bracelet dangled from his left wrist.3. Fill in the blank in each sentence with a word or phrase from the box, using its appropriate form.1).She thought she was too homely to get a date.2).I could hear the note of appeal in her voice as she asked me to talk things over again.3).In this decade of politics, many more women have become magistrates.4).I hope that we can settle this issue amicably.5).This is a far from solemn book -- it is a rich mix of pleasures and information, and isfull of surprises.6).We rushed out of the shop in hot pursuit, but the thief had vanished into thin air.7).He twisted and turned, trying to free himself from the rope.8).I tried to excuse myself for missing her party but made the attempts very clumsily.4. Make a sentence of your own for each of the given words with meanings other than those used in the text. You may change the part of speech of these words.1) cells→ Those cells divide and form many other different types of cells.2) yield→ Last year 400,000 acres of land yielded a crop worth $1.75 billion in that country.3) lock→ The police beat them up and locked them in a cell.4) stand by→ I think we have to stand by what we believe.5) tick→ A wind-up clock ticked busily from the kitchen counter.6) side→ He calls me twenty times a day and needs me by his side.5. Put the words in the parentheses into their appropriate tenses and aspects.When I (1) opened (open) the door I (2) saw (see) a man on his knees. He clearly (3) had been listening (listen) to our conversation and I (4) wondered (wonder) how much he (5) had heard (hear). When I (6) asked (ask) what he (7) was doing (do), he (8) said (say) that he (9) had dropped (drop) a 50p piece outside the door and (10) had been looking (look) for it. I (11) didn’t see(not see) any sign of the money, but I (12) found (find) a small notebook and pencil which he probably (13) had dropped (drop) when the door (14)opened (open) suddenly. So he (15) had been taking (take) notes of our conversation! The notes (16) were (be) written in a foreign language, so I (17) turned (turn) to the stranger and (18) asked (ask) him to translate. But he (19) pulled (pull) my hat over my eyes and (20) ran (run) off down the corridor. By the time I (21) recovered (recover) from the shock he (22) had disappeared (disappear) round the corner. Curiously enough, when I (23) moved (move) my foot I (24) found (find) that I (25) had been standing (stand) on a 50p piece. Perhaps he (26) had been telling (tell) the truth after all!6. Put a word in each blank that is appropriate for the context.Of the many problems in the world today, none is as widespread, or as old, as crime. Crime, in all its (1) forms, penetrates every layer of society and touches every human being. Whatever you do, wherever you live, you are (2) victim of crime whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not. Crime, (3) especially violent crime, has risen to a point where many people are afraid to walk (4) alone in their own neighborhoods, afraid to open their doors after (5) dark, and even afraid to speak out and voice their own opinions. Some experts have identified several factors that (6) contribute to the crime rate: massive urbanization, unemployment and poverty, and a large immigrant (7) population. The most important problem that remains (8) unsolved is how to stop crime from happening. So far, different types of solutions have been proposed to (9) combat various crimes. Are they all very (10) effective? No, not at all. Therefore, more effective measures and more powerful actions are to be taken against all sorts of crime so that our world may be a better place to live in.IV. Translation1. Translate the following into English.1). 当我女儿听说十二岁以下的儿童不得入场观看那场电影时，她气得双脚直跳。

A Hangingby Eric A. BlairAdelphi, August 1931IT WAS in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall Indian warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening.Eight o‟clock struck and a bugle call, desola tely thin in the wet air, floated from the distant barracks. The superintendent of the jail, who was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the gravel with his stick, raised his head at the sound. He was an army doctor, with a grey toothbrush moustache and a gruff voice. “For God‟s sake hurry up, Francis,” he said irritably. “The man ought to have been dead by this time. Aren‟t you ready yet?”Francis, the head jailer, a fat Dravidian in a white drill suit and gold spectacles, waved his black hand. “Yes sir, yes sir,” he bubbled. “All iss satisfactorily prepared. The hangman is waiting. We shall proceed.”“Well, quick march, then. The prisoners can‟t get their breakfast till this job‟s over.”We set out for the gallows. Two warders marched on either side of the prisoner, with their rifles at the slope; two others marched close against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed behind. Suddenly, when we had gone ten yards, the procession stopped short without any order or warning. A dreadful thing had happened—a dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. It came bounding among us with a loud volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging its whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together. It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to lick his face. Everyone stood aghast, too taken aback even to grab at the dog.“Who let that bloody brute in here?” said the superintendent angrily. “Catch it, someone!”A warder, detached from the escort, charged clumsily after the dog, but it danced and gambolled just out of his reach, taking everything as part of the game. A young Eurasian jailer picked up a handful of gravel and tried to stone the dog away, but it dodged the stones and came after us again. Its yaps echoed from the jail walls. The prisoner, in the grasp of the two warders, looked on incuriously, as though this was another formality of the hanging. It was several minutes before someone managed to catch the dog. Then we put my handkerchief through its collar and moved off once more, with the dog still straining and whimpering.It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never straightens his knees. At each step hismuscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working—bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming—all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned—reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone—one mind less, one world less.The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of the prison, and overgrown with tall prickly weeds. It was a brick erection like three sides of a shed, with planking on top, and above that two beams and a crossbar with the rope dangling. The hangman, a grey-haired convict in the white uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his machine. He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word from Francis the two warders, gripping the prisoner more closely than ever, half led, half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up the ladder. Then the hangman climbed up and fixed the rope round the prisoner‟s neck.We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough circle round the gallows. And then, when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”, not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog answered the sound with a whine. The hangman, still standing on the gallows, produced a small cotton bag like a flour bag and drew it down over the prisoner‟s face.But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still persisted, over and over again: “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and on, “Ram! Ram! Ram!” never faltering for an instant. The superintendent, his head on his chest, was slowly poking the ground with his stick; perhaps he was counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed number—fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The Indians had gone grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the bayonets were wavering. We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries—each cry another second of life; the same thought was in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise!Suddenly the superintendent made up his mind. Throwing up his head he made a swift motion with his stick. “Chalo!” he shouted almost fiercely.There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had vanished, and the rope was twisting on itself. I let go of the dog, and it galloped immediately to the back of the gallows; but when it got there it stopped short, barked, and then retreated into a corner of the yard, where it stood among the weeds, looking timorously out at us. We went round the gallows to inspect the prisoner‟s body. He was dangling with his toes pointed straight downwards, very slowly revolving, as dead as a stone.The superintendent reached out with his stick and poked the bare body; it oscillated, slightly. “He’s all right,” said the superintendent. He backed out from under the gallows, and blew out a deep breath. The moody look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his wrist-watch. “Eight minutes past eight. Well, that‟s all for this morning, thank God.”The warders unfixed bayonets and marched away. The dog, sobered and conscious of having misbehaved itself, slipped after them. We walked out of the gallows yard, past the condemned cells with their waiting prisoners, into the big central yard of the prison. The convicts, under the command of warders armed with lathis, were alreadyreceiving their breakfast. They squatted in long rows, each man holding a tin pannikin, while two warders with buckets marched round ladling out rice; it seemed quite a homely, jolly scene, after the hanging. An enormous relief had come upon us now that the job was done. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily.The Eurasian boy walking beside me nodded towards the way we had come, with a knowing smile: “Do you know, sir, our friend (he meant the dead man), when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor of his cell. From fright. Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you not admire my new silver case, sir? From the boxwallah, two rupees eight annas. Classy European style.”Several people laughed—at what, nobody seemed certain.Francis was walking by the superintendent, talking garrulously. “Well, sir, all hass passed off with the utmost satisfactoriness. It wass all finished—flick! like that. It iss not always so—oah, no! I have known cases where the doctor wass obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull the prisoner‟s legs to ensure decease. Most disagreeable!”“Wriggling about, eh? That‟s bad,” said the superintendent.“Ach, sir, it iss worse when they become refractory! One man, I recall, clung to the bars of hiss cage when we went to take him out. You will scarcely credit, sir, that it took six warders to dislodge him, three pulling at each leg. We reasoned with him. …My dear fellow,‟ we said, …think of all the pain and trouble you are causing to us!‟ B ut no, he would not listen! Ach, he wass very troublesome!”I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the superintendent grinned in a tolerant way. “You‟d better all come out and have a drink,” he said quite genially. “I‟ve got a bottle of whisky in the car. We could do with it.”We went through the big double gates of the prison, into the road. “Pulling at hislegs!” exclaimed a Burmese magistrate suddenly, and burst into a loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment Francis‟s anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.行刑（乔治·奥威尔）缅甸，一个雨水浸湿的早晨。

a hanging课文概括《A Hanging》是英国作家乔治·奥威尔的一篇散文，旨在探讨死刑的道德和人性。

故事发生在英属缅甸的一座监狱，主人公是一个匿名的狱卒，他亲身经历了一次绞刑的过程。

故事的开头，狱卒描述了天空的宁静和他同事们在监狱院子里行走的情景。

一只老鸟在他身边飞过，这种平静的氛围混杂着即将到来的暴力和死亡，形成了一种讽刺的对比。

主角们随后带着重犯走向绞刑场所，那是一个废弃的操场。

奥威尔在描写操场的细节时表达了一种庄严肃穆的气氛，例如操场上的沉默和被强风吹动的树叶的声音。

他还描绘了绞刑台以及真正执行死刑所需的绳索和附件的细节，这些细节使读者感受到死刑的无情和残忍。

当死刑犯被带至绞刑台时，他们已经身着白色制服，面容枯槁，不再像他们进入监狱时那样嚣张。

狱卒们将他们绑在绞刑台上，他们目光呆滞地注视着前方，毫无抵抗之力。

奥威尔用生动的描写表现出绞刑犯的心理状态，他们已经完全放弃了生活的意志。

随着绞刑的进行，奥威尔用生动的描写表现了绞刑犯的痛苦，例如他们脸色发白、眼睛凸出、流着口水等。

这些描写深入人心，引起读者对死刑是否人道的思考。

在欢呼声中，狱卒们解下了已经死亡的犯人的绳子，抬起他们的尸体，并将他们送回监狱。

回到监狱的路上，狱卒们不再感到害怕或沮丧，反而恢复了往常的心情。

他们在路上谈笑风生，仿佛刚刚经历的一切只是一场游戏，而不是死亡的现场。

整个故事的最后一段，奥威尔以一种讽刺的语气描述了狱卒们回到监狱时的场景。

他们各自回到了自己的岗位，再次恢复了对囚犯的严厉管理和虐待。

他们中的一些人甚至在屋顶上观看了即将进行的执行下一次死刑的准备工作，仿佛他们对死亡已经变得麻木不仁。

通过《A Hanging》，奥威尔试图向读者传达思考和反思死刑的重要性。

他用生动的描写和对比，揭示了死刑在人们心目中的残忍和无情，以及人性在面对死亡时的变化。

这篇散文在道德和伦理层面上引发了一系列问题，同时提供了对死刑进行思考和讨论的机会。

A HangingGeorge OrwellIt was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall Indian warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening.Eight o’clock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air, fl oated from the distant barracks. The superintendent of the jail, who was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the gravel with his stick, raised his head at the sound. He was an army doctor, with a grey toothbrush moustache and a gruff voice. “For God’s sake hurry up, Francis,” he said irritably. “The man ought to have been dead by this time. Aren’t you ready yet?”Francis, the head jailer, a fat Dravidian in a white drill suit and gold spectacles, waved his black hand. “Yes sir, yes sir,” he bubbled. “All i s satisfactorily prepared. The hangman i s waiting. We shall proceed.”“Well, quick march, then. The prisoners can’t get their breakfast till this job’s over.”We set out for the gallows. Two warders marched on either side of the prisoner, with their rifles at the slope; two others marched close against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed behind. Suddenly, when we had gone ten yards, the procession stopped short without any order or warning. A dreadful thing had happened —a dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. It came bounding among us with a loud volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging its whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together. It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to lick his face. Everyone stood aghast, too taken aback even to grab at the dog.“Who let that bloody brute in here?” said the superintendent angrily. “Catch it, someone!”A warder, detached from the escort, charged clumsily after the dog, but it danced and gambolled just out of his reach, taking everything as part of the game. A young Eurasian jailer picked up a handful of gravel and tried to stone the dog away, but it dodged the stones and came after us again. Its yaps echoed from the jail wails. The prisoner, in the grasp of the two warders, looked on incuriously, as though this was another formality of the hanging. It was several minutes before someone managed to catch the dog. Then we put my handkerchief through its collar and moved off once more, with the dog still straining and whimpering.It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working — bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming —all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned —reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone — one mind less, one world less.The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of the prison, and overgrown with tall prickly weeds. It was a brick erection like three sides of a shed, with planking on top, and above that two beams and a crossbar with the rope dangling. The hangman, a grey-haired convict in the white uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his machine. He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word from Francis the two warders, gripping the prisoner more closely than ever, half led, half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up the ladder. Then the hangman climbed up and fixed the rope round the prisoner’s neck.We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough circle round the gallows. And then, when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reite rated cry of “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”, not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog answered the sound with a whine. The hangman, still standing on the gallows, produced a small cot ton bag like a flour bag and drew it down over the prisoner’s face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still persisted, over and over again: “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes seemed to pass. T he steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and on, “Ram! Ram! Ram!” never faltering for an instant. The superintendent, his head on his chest, was slowly poking the ground with his stick; perhaps he was counting the cries, allowing the prisonera fixed number — fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The Indians had gone grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the bayonets were wavering. We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries —each cry another second of life; the same thought was in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise!Suddenly the superintendent made up his mind. Throwing up his head he made a swift motion with his stick. “Chalo!” he shouted almost fier cely.There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had vanished, and the rope was twisting on itself. I let go of the dog, and it galloped immediately to the back of the gallows; but when it got there it stopped short, barked, and then retreated into a corner of the yard, where it stood among the weeds, looking timorously out at us. We went round the gallows to inspect the prisoner’s body. He was dangling with his toes pointed straight downwards, very slowly revolving, as dead as a stone.The superintendent reached out with his stick and poked the bare body; it oscillated, slightly. “HE’S all right,” said the superintendent. He backed out from under the gallows, and blew out a deep breath. The moody look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his wrist-watch. “Eight minutes past eight. Well, that’s all for this morning, thank God.”The warders unfixed bayonets and marched away. The dog, sobered and conscious of having misbehaved itself, slipped after them. We walked out of the gallows yard, past the condemned cells with their waiting prisoners, into the big central yard of the prison. The convicts, under the command of warders armed with lathis, were already receiving their breakfast. They squatted in long rows, each man holding a tin pannikin, while two warders with buckets marched round ladling out rice; it seemed quite a homely, jolly scene, after the hanging. An enormous relief had come upon us now that the job was done. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily.The Eurasian boy walking beside me nodded towards the way we had come, with a knowing smile: “Do you know, sir, our friend (he meant the dead man), when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor of his cell. From fright.—Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you not admire my new silver case, sir? From the boxwallah, two rupees eight annas. Classy European style.”Several people laughed — at what, nobody seemed certain.Francis was walking by the superintendent, talking garrulously. “Well, sir, all ha s passed off with the utmost satisfactoriness. It was all finished — flick! like that. It is not always so — oah, no! I have known cases where the doctor was obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull the prisoner’s legs to ensure decease. Most disagreeable!”“Wriggling about, eh? That’s bad,” said the superintendent.“Ach, sir, it is worse when they become refractory! One man, I recall, clung to the bars of hiss cage when we went to take him out. You will scarcely credit, sir, that it took six warders to dislodge him, three pulling at each leg. We reasoned with him. “My dear fellow,” we said, “think of all the pain and trouble you are causing to us!” But no, he would not listen! Ach, he was very troublesome!”I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even thesuperintendent grinned in a tolerant way. “You’d better all come out and have a drink,” he said quite genially. “I’ve got a bottle of whisky in the car. We could do with it.”We went through the big double gates of the prison, into the road. “Pulling at his legs!” exclaimed a Burmese magistrate suddenly, and burst into a loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment Francis’s anecdote seemed ex traordinarily funny. We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.。