Chapter 2 Summary

This is a gruesome little story about the hanging of a Hindu prisoner in a dank, Burmese jail. In this essay, Orwell describes how the condemned is removed from his small cell, with its pitiful plank bed and water pot and prepared for the gallows. They begin to march him towards his fate, when a stray dog intervenes. The creature makes its way to the prisoner, jumping up at him, trying to lick his face, a great distraction at a very delicate and somber moment.

Although at the end of his moments on Earth, the Indian walked with a kind of dignity to his death, even managing to avoid a puddle in his path. Orwell feels with great sensitivity the condemned's aliveness, his living, breathing vivacity- and the horror of the event that is about to unfold. As if to underscore that aliveness...