In Favor of Capital Punishment

Book 2 Lesson 13 In Favor of Capital Punishment Lecturer: Meng Fanyan

Teaching Aims • 1)Improving students’ ability to read between lines and understand the text properly; • 2)Cultivating students’ ability to make a creative reading; • 3)Enhancing students’ ability to appreciate the text from different perspectives; • 4) Helping students to understand some difficult words and expressions; • 5) Helping students to understanding rhetorical devices; • 6)Encouraging students to voice their own viewpoint fluently and accurately

Teaching Contents • 1)Background Knowledge About the Author and His Works • 2)Literature Type: Argument • 3)Detailed Study of the Essay • 4)Organization Pattern • 5)Style and Language Features • 6)Special Difficulties • 7)Debate

Time allocation • 1)Background knowledge (15 min.)2)Detailed study of the text (180 min.)3)Structure analysis (15 min.)4)Language appreciation (15 min.)5)Free talk (30 min)

Background Knowledge • About the Author and His Works • 1) A brief introduction to the author, Jacques Barzun • Connect to www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jpriestley.htm

Jacques Barzun • university teacher and administrator since the 1920s, Jacques Barzun (1907-- ) has been dean of faculties and provost at Columbia University. Not only is he a distinguished author but a person of wide interests. His books, for example, include The House of Intellect; Berlioz and Romantic Century; Darwin, Marx, Wagner; and, with Wendell H. Tyler, A Catalogue of Crime. This well-organized essay is marked by its concern for the victim instead of the criminal.

2) Capital punishment & life imprisonmentArgumentType of literature: a piece of argumenthttp://teachnet-lab.org/santab/jeff/sbargue_index.htmhttp://homepages.iol.ie/~laoistec/LENGLISH/lpers.html

Victor Gollancz: • English writer. Publications include: The Betrayal of the Left ; What Burchenwald Really Means ; Leaving Them to Their Fate ; Our Threatened Values, etc.3. Koestler: Arthur Koestler (1905--), Hungarian-American author. Publications include: Spanish Testament ; Gladiators ; Darkness at Noon ; Scum of the Earth, etc.

Shaw: • George Bernard Shaw (1856--1950), Irish playwright and critic, widely considered the greatest British dramatist since Shakespeare. • He revolutionized the Victorian stage, then dominated by artificial melodramas, by presenting vigorous dramas of ideas. The lengthy prefaces to Shaw' s plays reveal his mastery of English prose. His music and theater criticism is among the finest ever written.

In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Shaw was an ardent socialist, a member of the Fabian Society, and a popular public speaker actively propagating the socialist theories of the Fabians. The Fabians were opposed to the revolutionary theory of Marxism and repudiated the necessity of violent class struggle.

Although Shaw' s plays focus on ideas and issues, they are vital and absorbing, enlivened by memorable characterizations, a brilliant command of language, and dazzling wit. • In addition to being produced, his early plays were published as Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (2 vols. ,1898). • The "unpleasant" plays were Widower's Houses (1892), on slum landlordism; 7"he Philanderer (written in 1893, produced in 1905), and • Mrs Warren's Profession (written in 1893, produced in 1902), a jibe at the Victorian attitude toward prostitution.

The "pleasant " plays were Arms and the Man (1894), satirizing romantic attitudes toward love and war; • Candida (1893); and You Never Can Tell (1895). • In 1897, The Devil's Disciple, a play on the American Revolution, was produced with great success in New York City. It was published in the volume Three Plays for Puritans (1901) along with Caesar and Cleopatra (1899), notable for its realistic, humorous portraits of historical figures, and Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1900). • During the early 20th century Shaw wrote his greatest and most popular plays.

Man and Superman (1905), in which an idealistic, cerebral man succumbs to marriage (the play contains an explicit articulation of a major Shavian theme -- that man is the spiritual creator, whereas woman is the biological "life force" that must always triumph over him); • Major Barbara (1905), which postulates that poverty is the cause of all evil; Androcles and the Lion (1912~ a short play), a charming satire of Christianity; and Pygmalion (1913), which satirizes the English class system through the story of a cockney girl's transformation into a lady at the hands of a speech professor.

The latter has proved to be Shaw' s most successful work -- as a play, as a motion picture, and as the basis for the musical My Fair Lady (1956). • Of Shaw's later plays, Saint Joan (1923)is the most memorable; it argues that Joan of Arc, a harbinger of Protestantism and nationalism, had to be killed because the world was not yet ready for her. • Among Shaw' s other plays are John Bull's Other Island (1904), The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), Fanny's First Play (1911), Heartbreak House (1921), Back to Methuselah (1922), The Apple Cart (1928), Too True to Be Good (1923), etc.

Nietzsche: • Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 -- 1900), German philosopher, born in Roekew, Prussia. • The son of a clergyman, Nietzsche studied Greek and Latin at Bonn and Leipzig and was appointed to the chair of classical philology at Basel in 1869. Nervous disturbances and eye trouble forced Nietzsche to leave Basel in 1879; • he moved from place to place in a vain effort to improve his health until 1889, when he became hopelessly insane. Nietzsche was not a systematic philosopher but rather a moralist who passionately rejected Western bourgeois civilization.

He regarded Christian civilization as decadent, and in place of its "slave morality" he looked to the super-man, the creator of a new heroic morality that would consciously affirm life and the life values. That superman would represent the highest passion and creativity and would live at a level of experience beyond the conventional standards of good and evil. • His creative "will to power" would set him off from "the herd" of inferior humanity. Nietzsche' s thought had widespread influence but was of particular importance in Germany.

Apologists for Nazism seized on much of his writhing as a philosophical justification for their doctrines of national and racial superiority and their despisal of political democracy and equality. Most scholars regard this as a perversion of Nietzsche' s thought, pointing to his strong individualism and his contempt for the state, especially the German state. Among his most famous works are The Birth of Tragedy (1872) ; Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883--1891), and Beyond Good and Evil (1886).

John of Arc: • French, Jeanne d' Arc (14127-- 1431), French saint and national heroine, called the Maid of Or- leans: daughter of a farmer of Domremy on the border between Champagne and Lorraine. • At a young age she began to hear "voices those of St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret. When she was about 16, the voices exhorted her to bear aid to the dauphin, later King Charles Ⅶ, then kept from the throne by the English in the Hundred Years War. • She made the journey in male at- tire and meeting the dauphin at Chinon Castle. She conquered his skepticism as to her divine mission and was furnished with troops by Charles.

In May, 1429, she sueceeded in raising the siege of Orleans, and in June she took other English posts on the Loire and defeated the English at Patay. After considerable persuasion the dauphin agreed to be crowned at Rheims~ Joan stood near him at his coronation. This was the pinnacle of her for- tunes. • In September 1429, Joan unsuccessfully besieged Paris. The following spring she went to relieve Compiegne, but she was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English, who were eager to destroy her influence by putting her to death. Charles ~ made no attempt to secure her freedom.

In order to escape responsibility, the English turned her over to the ecclesiastical court at Rouen. She was tried for heresy and witchcraft and was finally burned at the stake (May 30, 1431) in Rouen. • Joan was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. Her career lent itself to numerous legends, and she has been rep- resented in many paintings and statues. In literature and music she appears notably, though not always accurately, in works by many eminent writers and composers.

Organization Pattern • 1) The thesis stated in the title of the essay: In favor of capital punishment • 2) In this piece the writer does not appeal mainly to the emotions of the reader. • 3) The writer tries to convince his reader through facts and logical reasoning and by refuting the fallacies of his opponents. • 4) Weakness: Many abstract terms in essay remain undefined and vague.

Style and Language Features • 1) Smooth and polish2) Convincing and formal 3) Use of many learned, and specialized terms 4) Rhetorical Devices

Rhetorical Devices • metaphor simile ellipsis transferred epithet metonymy euphemism Connect to http://www.megabrands.com/carroll/faq3.htmlto get specific information on rhetorical devices

Detailed study of In Favor of Capital Punishment • Para.1-2 • Introduction and admitting that many people of much talent and enlightened goodwill are abolitionists. • Transferred epithet“ The letters, sad and reproachful, offer me the choice of pleading ignorance…”“ The assemblage of so much talent and enlightened good will behind a single proposal …”Parallelism “ I am asked…”“ I am told…” “ I am invited…”

Para.3 • The author states that he could be convinced to abolish capital punishment on the condition that:1) Some fallacies and frivolities in the abolitionist argument are disposed of;2) The difficulties should be overcome instead of being ignored;3) The safeguards could be found to really meet the difficulties;

Para.4The author states that he himself considers the present way of implementing capital punishment is revolting but this cannot be an excuse for the abolitionist to against capital punishment.Question: Whether capital punishment is justifiable if there is a painless, sudden and dignified death?

Para 5: • The four main arguments advanced against the death penalty are:1) punishment for crime is a primitive idea rooted in revenge; 2) capital punishment does not deter; 3) judicial error being possible, taking life is an appalling risk; 4) a civilized state, to deserve its name, must uphold, not violate, the sanctity of human life.

Para 6-7 • Explanation of writer’s agreement on the first pair of propositions.Question: 1) Why does the writer agree with the first pair of propositions?2) What does Barzun mean by “the moral basis of civilization”?Personification“ No anger, vindictiveness or moral conceit need preside over the removal of such dangers.”

Para 8-11 • Both Barzun and the abolitionists base their arguments on a brief in the sanctity of human life.Abolitionists: capital punishment violates the sanctity of human life.Barzun: capital punishment protects the sanctity of human life.1) If capital punishment violates the sanctity of human life, how about the war, the perfect means of killing, launched and supported by these abolitionists?

2) If capital punishment violates the sanctity of human life, how about the bystanders killed by the police who are so excited that he misses the target?3) If capital punishment violates the sanctity of human life, how about the sanctity of the victims lives?Conclusion: The absolute sanctity of human life is, for the abolitionists, a slogan rather than a considered proposition.

Para12 -14: • The fallacies of the abolitionists should be disposed of.Fallacy: The victims of violence are easy to forgetQuestion: Who forgets the victims of violence?1) Social science: forgetting the victim and paying greater attention to and showing more concern for the criminal who is supposed to be mentally troubled, abnormal or a problem case.2) Psychiatry and moral liberalism: believe that criminals are sick people who should be cured rather than punished.

3) Modern literature: only interested in people who are mentally and spiritually troubled.4) The determinism of natural science: strengthens the assumption that all evils in a society have been brought abut by the existing conditions and circumstances of that society.5) French jurist: It is society alone that should be held responsible for the criminal and his crimeSarcasm

“ it is too bad.” Cvek alone seems instructive,…” Determinism: the doctrine that everything, especially one’s choice of action, is determined by a sequence of causes independent of one’s willThe author’s argument: Since so many ordinary people’s lives are deprived by the criminals, where does the sanctity of life begin?

Para15-19: • The frivolities of the abolitionists should be disposed of.Question: What are the frivolities the abolitionists cling to?Hypotheses: the criminals’ misdeed is “the fault of society”, Can criminal be cured?1) The “scientific” means of cure are more than uncertain.2) Imprisonment only increases the killer’s antisocial feelings.

3) Reformatories and mental hospitals are too full to hold the criminals and these institutions are inclined to release their inmates.4) Once be released, they will be killer again.Conclusion: Society has failed twice to protect the victims when convicted murderers are released to commit violent crimes a second time.

Author’s standpoint uttered in Para.16 is: ________________. • Irrationally taking the life of another • ↓ • crimes passionnels maniac bank robber • ( forgiven) ( sentenced to death)

“ This confused echo of modern literature and modern science defines the choice before us….”—The psychology of this killer is a confused representation of the influence of modern literature and science. This psychology of the killer describes exactly the choice that lies before us.

Question: What is the choice? — capital punishment — abolition of capital punishment— treating the killer as a sick person who is to be cure. • “ …but also a re-education of the mind, so as to throw into correct perspective the garbled ideas of … of our times.” — to cure this type of killer one must also change his way of thinking so that he can judge and interpret correctly the ideas of Freud, Nietzsche, Gide and Dostoevski which he distorted or misunderstood. This killer, with a mania for power, and people of his sort got their garbled ideas from the culture and mood of our times.“ if psychiatry were sure … the shooting start.” Sarcasm“ Failing a second birth …less hypocritical?”

Para. 20: • Our society is far from civilized institutions.Assumption: Establish a law sentencing to death the people who violate the sanctity of orderly discourse in arriving at justice, …The suggestion of a such a law sounds ludicrous.

Para21-23: • Imprisonment is worse than death.Exemplification:1) Wilde’s Defundis2) Charles Burney’s Solitary Confinement3) John of Arc4) Mr. Leslie Hale, M. P.’s Hanged in ErrorConclusion: Both capital punishment and imprisonment are irrevocable sentence.

Question: 1) Pick out the words and phrases used to describe how terrible the imprisonment is.2) How do you understand of the “ I shall believe in the abolitionist’s present view only after he has emerged from twelve months in a convict cell.3) Barzun states a “model prisoner (is) first a contradiction in terms, and second, an exemplar of what a free society should not want.” Why?

Para.25-28 • The fault in the present system is not the sentence but the fallible procedure.Question:1) What are the specifics of the Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard, Jr. case? Why was he freed?2) What reforms in judicial procedures does Barzun suggest?

Para.29 Conclusion: To abolish capital punishment is to violate the sanctity of human life.

Oral practice: Talking about the following questions: • 1. Does the writer try to appeal to the readers’ emotions or does he try to convince with logical facts? Cite example.2. What does the vocabulary of this essay tell you about the audience to whom this essay is addressed?3. What paragraph organizes the essay? Using this paragraph as a guide, divide the essay into its component parts.4. What is the unifying theme of the essay?

5. What kind of detail is primarily used to develop the following paragraphs:21,23, and 25?6. How is transition accomplished between the following paragraphs: 7 and 8, 14 and 15, 22 and 23?7. Is it fair to say that this essay is largely a seconding of the author’s personal views?8. Have you found any fallacy in the writer’s arguments?

Words and expressions • capital (adj.) : involving or punishable by death (originally by decapitation)(罪恶等可处)死刑的(原指可斩首的) • sheaf (n.) : a collection of things gathered together；bundle，as of papers(书等的)一捆

reproachful (adj.) : full of or expressing reproach，or blame，censure，etc．责备的；应受斥责的；可耻的 • rapist (n.) : a person who has committed rape强奸犯

psychiatry (n.) : the branch of medicine concerned with the study, treatment，and prevention of disorders of the mind，including psychoses and neuroses，emotional and social maladjustments，etc．精神病学 • assemblage (n.) : bringing or coming together；assembly集合，会合

conviction (n.) : firm or assured belief深信，确信；信服 • airtight (adj.) : giving no opening for attack；invulnerable无懈可击的；天衣无缝的 • frivolity (n.) : the quality or condition of being frivolous轻率；轻浮；无聊

sanguinary (adj.) : eager for bloodshed；bloodthirsty嗜血成性的；好杀戮的 • concede (v.) : admit as true or valid；acknowledge承认；认以为真 • outset (n.) : setting out；beginning；start开端；开始，起初

In Favor of Capital Punishment