In Favor of Capital Punishment

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In Favor of Capital Punishment

• Jacques Barzun

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Objectives of Teaching

1. To comprehend the whole text
2. To lean and master the vocabulary and expressions
3. To learn to paraphrase the difficult sentences
4. To understand the structure of the text
5. To appreciate the style and rhetoric of the
   passage.

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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

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• 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.

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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

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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)

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Background Knowledge

• 1) A brief introduction to the author, Jacques
  Barzun
• www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jpriestley.htm
• 2) Capital punishment life imprisonment

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Argument

• Type of literature a piece of argument
• http//teachnet-lab.org/santab/jeff/sbargue_index.
  htm
• http//homepages.iol.ie/laoistec/LENGLISH/lpers.h
  tml

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Pre-class task

• 1)Appreciation of the Movie The ShawShank
  Redemption
• 2) Give a description of the roles and their fate
  of the prisoners, and voice your opinion on the
  Capital punishment and imprisonment respectively
  to decide whether you are for or against Capital
  punishment.
• 3)Prepare a debate on In favor of capital
  punishment vs. In favor of imprisonment.

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Detailed study of In Favor of Capital
Punishment

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Para.1-2

• Introduction and admitting that many people of
  much talent and enlightened goodwill are
  abolitionists.

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• 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

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• Parallelism
• I am asked
• I am told
• I am invited

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Para.3

• The author states that he could be convinced to
  abolish capital punishment on the condition that

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• 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

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Para.4

• The 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.

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• Question Whether capital punishment is
  justifiable if there is a painless, sudden and
  dignified death?

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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.

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Para 6-7

• Explanation of writers agreement on the first
  pair of propositions.

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Para.8-11

• Abolitionists capital punishment violates the
  sanctity of human life.
• Barzun capital punishment protects the sanctity
  of human life.

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• 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?

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• Conclusion The absolute sanctity of human life
  is, for the abolitionists, a slogan rather than a
  considered proposition.

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• Personification
• No anger, vindictiveness or moral conceit need
  preside over the removal of such dangers.
• Para 8 Both Barzun and the abolitionists base
  their arguments on a brief in the sanctity of
  human life.

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Para12 -14

• The fallacies of the abolitionists should be
  disposed of.
• Fallacy The victims of violence are easy to
  forget

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 4)The determinism of natural science strengthens
  the assumption that all evils in a society have
  been brought about 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
  crime

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• Sarcasm
• it is too bad. Cvek alone seems instructive,

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• Determinism the doctrine that everything,
  especially ones choice of action, is determined
  by a sequence of causes independent of ones will

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• The authors argument Since so many ordinary
  peoples lives are deprived by the criminals,
  where does the sanctity of life begin?

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Para15-19

• The frivolities of the abolitionists should be
  disposed of.
• Question What are the frivolities the
  abolitionists cling to?

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• Hypotheses the criminals misdeed is the fault
  of society,
• Can criminal be cured?

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• 1) The scientific means of cure are more than
  uncertain.
• 2) Imprisonment only increases the killers
  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.

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• Conclusion Society has failed twice to protect
  the victims when convicted murderers are released
  to commit violent crimes a second time.

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• Authors standpoint uttered in Para.16 is
  ________________.

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• Irrationally taking the life of another
• ?
• crimes passionnels maniac banker robber
• ( forgiven) ( sentenced to
  death)

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• 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.

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• Question What is the choice?
•      capital punishment
•      abolition of capital punishment
•      treating the killer as a sick person who
  is to be cure.

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• but also a re-education of the mind, so as to
  throw into correct perspective the garbled ideas
  of of our times.

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•     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.

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• if psychiatry were sure the shooting start.
• Sarcasm
• Failing a second birth less hypocritical?

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Para. 20

• Our society is far from civilized institutions.

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• 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.

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Para21-24

• Imprisonment is worse than death.

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• Exemplification
• 1) Wildes Defundis
• 2) Charles Burneys Solitary Confinement
• 3) John of Arc
• 4) Mr. Leslie Hale, M. P.s Hanged in Error

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• Conclusion Both capital punishment and
  imprisonment are irrevocable sentence.

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• 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 abolitionists present view only after he
  has emerged from twelve months in a convict cell.

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• 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?

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Para.25-28

• The fault in the present system is not the
  sentence but the fallible procedure.

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• 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?

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Para.29

• Conclusion To abolish capital punishment is to
  violate the sanctity of human life.

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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.

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Style and Language Features

• 1) Smooth and polish
• 2) Convincing and formal
• 3) Use of many learned, and specialized terms

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• 4) Rhetorical Devices
• metaphor
• simile
• ellipsis
• transferred epithet
• metonymy
• euphemism
• http//www.megabrands.com/carroll/faq3.htmlto

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Special Difficulties

• Identifying and understanding technical terms in
  this essay
• capital imprisonment
• execution
• judicial homicide
• euthanasia
• counsel testimony
• penitentiary
• miscarriage of justice
• acquittal
• parole

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Debate

• For or Against Capital Punishment