The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo and In Cold...

One debate that is surrounded by the death penalty is the humanity of it. Can we consider making someone wait for months, and even more realistically years, to be put to death? In the books The Last Day of a Condemned Man and In Cold Blood, both narrators tell the tale of impending death. While The Last Day of a Condemned Man is told in a first person view, In Cold Blood is told from a third person. Although from different views, each tells the trials and tribulations of approaching the death penalty. The Last Day of a Condemned Man wrote by Victor Hugo, is told by a man who is waiting on death row for a crime never established. Based on 1829 France and the reign of terror, from the beginning of the novel to the end you see the†¦show more content†¦That quote gives you a real sense of the suffering one feels while they are on death row. Although Capote does not use the same metaphor in In Cold Blood, illness is also a part of the novel. Capote uses mental heath as a sta tement when it came to Perry. Although Capote never comes right out and says it, both him and Perry seem to have a little bit of mental illness. While Perry showed signs of mental illness before the murders, his incarceration also seems to intensify it. Perry was diagnosed with schizophrenia and extreme paranoia. With death constantly looming over his head, the paranoid thoughts he suffered from continued and became more prevalent. Since 1983, over 60 people with mental illness or retardation have been executed in the United States. It is also known that mental illness increases thirty percent when in incarceration. In both novels the criminals were put to death in inhumane ways. In The Last Day of a Condemned Man, the man is put to death by the guillotine, and in In Cold Blood, hanging killed both Perry and Dick. While the guillotine was a new, and more accurate way of killing than the axe, it still did not always work. Also, the beheading was done out in the square in fron t of all to see. This humiliating experience is the last thing the convicted would see. Also, many times the convicted would be killed in batches and would be forced to watch the others in front of them be killed. Hanging, although used for a