Throughout Heinrich von Kleist's "The Marquise of O-" communication breakdowns caused by Count F- cause much needless confusion and are the fault of many tribulations. Much of the Count's flaws that hinder communication happen because he tries to protect his honor by concealing the truth. Because of this cowardice and his self delusions of his own perfect moral character, Count F- communicates incorrectly to the Marquise and her family.
The Count's perception of himself as a humble military man is challenged when he is asked to identify the Marquise's assailants. The Count lies and says that he can not recognize them. He lies because of his own embarrassment in committing the act that the Marquise's attackers attempted and not taking the punishment. When the accused perpetrators are found the Count lets all five of them be executed for an act he committed. If the Count was to admit his crime of rape not only would he face death, but the devastating slaughter of his honor. To face dishonor of this caliber would be worse than death. The Count should have told the truth but concealed it because he feared his good reputation would be tarnished. In reality his failure to speak up shows him to be a coward, The Count the exact opposite of his intentions and self perception.
After the Count is shot on the battlefield, he believes that the bullet is his punishment for raping the Marquise instead of a result of war. He cries out "Giulietta! This Bullet avenges you!"(73) Because the Count endures the bullet he believes he that is wiped clean of the dishonorable act and that he no longer needs to be held responsible or punished additionally. This breakdown in communication also obstructs the Marquise's perception of the C...
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...in the order of the world."(113) It is disturbing that the severity of the act of rape has been diminished by the criminal because he believes that he should be given forgiveness because all people make mistakes. The act of rape is far more serious than the usual mistakes made in the world and should be acknowledged. Because of the breakdown in communication the Marquise and her family are all lead to believe that the Count should be forgiven instead of punished because apparently the rape was pardonable. At the end the Count is not punished for raping the Marquise but is happily married to her and fathering more children. Because the story does not have punishment for the criminal there is no closure. "The Marquise of O-" has an unsettling ending and no real conclusion because the Count's cowardice and self delusions cause many major communication breakdowns.
``In criminal law, confession evidence is a prosecutor’s most potent weapon’’ (Kassin, 1997)—“the ‘queen of proofs’ in the law” (Brooks, 2000). Regardless of when in the legal process they occur, statements of confession often provide the most incriminating form of evidence and have been shown to significantly increase the rate of conviction. Legal scholars even argue that a defendant’s confession may be the sole piece of evidence considered during a trial and often guides jurors’ perception of the case (McCormick, 1972). The admission of a false confession can be the deciding point between a suspect’s freedom and their death sentence. To this end, research and analysis of the false confessions-filled Norfolk Four case reveals the drastic and controversial measures that the prosecuting team will take to provoke a confession, be it true or false.
?What is left when honor is lost?? Publilius Syrus' quote, though dating from 100 B.C., still seems pertinent to our era (Quotations). Many people still feel that once integrity is lost they are nothing and many are willing to stand up to keep their integrity. Without integrity, we are nothing. During the time that Arthur Miller wrote his most famous play, The Crucible, innocent men and women are accused of having Communist leanings. Their whole lives are ruined in a short amount of time because they refuse to compromise themselves by selling out their friends. Miller tries to make a statement about these unfair trials by comparing them to the Salem witch-hunts and trials of 1692. The main protagonist of his play is a man named John Proctor who is accused of witchcraft but stands up to maintain his name and his honor, even though he is hanged for it. During the H.U.A.C. trials some took stands for their beliefs with the knowledge of possibly being shunned by society. Knowing this, instead of taking the cowards' way and giving the names of their friends, they refuse to tell the committee anything in the same way that John Proctor stands up against a court that is ruining the lives of innocent people.
...n whether to confess to witchcraft or not. His unwillingness to sign his name to the confession is because of his desire not to dishonor his fellow prisoners’ decisions to stand firm.
In Harry Mulisch’s novel The Assault, the author not only informs society of the variance in perception of good and evil, but also provides evidence on how important it is for an innocent person experiencing guilt to come to terms with their personal past. First, Mulisch uses the characters Takes, Coster, and Ploeg to express the differences in perspective on the night of the assault. Then he uses Anton to express how one cannot hide from the past because of their guilt. Both of these lessons are important to Mulisch and worth sharing with his readers.
...o devours the insides of children before he murders them to satisfy himself. In her second task, she sacrifices the fairies to eat some grapes. Like Captain Vidal who sacrifices his men to continue to be in power. In order for Ofelia to become a princess she has to die. Ofelia dehumanizes herself to achieve happiness. On the other hand, when Alice is eaten by the wolves, Rosaleen is delighted. In the film, the scenes transition from Alice’s agony to Rosaleen’s content over the death of her sister. During Alice’s funeral, Rosaleen is hardly affected by the death of her sister and paints herself as innocent. Jordan directs, “Why she did not save herself?” (The Company of Wolves). She ask the question, but in reality her sister’s welfare was far from her mind. Rosaleen’s happiness demonstrates a silent murderer. The girls embody their abusers and become the predators.
For three hours and a half in a courtroom at Boise, Ohio, Harry Orchard assembled in the witness chair at the Haywood trial and recounted a record of offenses, slaughter, and murder… the like of which no individual in the overcrowded courtroom had ever thought of. Not in the entire scope of "Bloody Gulch" literature will there be exposed anything that approaches an equivalent to the atrocious narrative so motionlessly, coolly, and composedly voiced by this audacious, disimpassioned man-slaughterer.
Later on that day, a delegation was invited into the prison by the Governor of the Bastille, Bernard de Launay. DeLaunay then invited the delegation to lunch with him. When they did not return the mob became angry, fearing that they had been detained. A second delegation was sent forth. These soon came out again with the message that the Governor had adamantly refused to surrender. The delegates also had the information that the cannon were unloaded. This piece of news was all that the mob needed to urge them on. "...But the fury of the crowd continued to increase and their blind wrath did not spare de Launay's escort...Exhausted by his efforts to defend his prisoner...he had to seperate from M. de Launay...Hardly had he sat down when, looking after the procession, he saw the head of M. de Launay stuck on the point of a pike...The people, fearing that their victim might be snatched away from them, hastened to cut his throat on the steps of the Hotel de Ville..."
Man’s inhumanity towards fellow man is shown in the guillotine scenes when the peasants are making many cruel jokes. Though it is not very funny because many innocent people are sent to their death at guillotine because of the Law of the Suspected. The Law of Suspected says that anyone who is “suspected to be in alliance with a emigrant or spy is subject for arrest and will be tried”. In A Tale of Two Cities two influential characters are a victims of the Law of Suspected, Charles Darnay and a young seamstress. Charles is sentenced to death at the guillotine but Carton, a “brave and generous friend”, took his place and the only person who noticed is the seamstress who dies thinking Carton is a hero. In this quote one see how cruel and deadly the Law of Suspected is “A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty thousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a Law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing; these things became the established order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they ...
The author’s purpose is to also allow the audience to understand the way the guards and superintendent felt towards the prisoners. We see this when the superintendent is upset because the execution is running late, and says, “For God’s sake hurry up, Francis.” And “The man ought to have been dead by this time.” This allows the reader to see the disrespect the authority has towards the prisoners.
John Proctor is, at first, willing to offer up a false confession that his life may be spared. Inevitably, John Proctor possesses that fateful attribute known to fall fatal to many human beings - pride. While he has, indeed, been ashamed of his many sins throughout his life, Proctor's soul still clings to his pride and his good name, however soiled it may have become. On the morning scheduled for his execution, Proctor wrestles with the realization that one more sin so heaped upon the rest in his life will make precious little difference in the end; "I cannot mount the gibbet like a saint. It is a fraud. I am not that man.... My honesty is broke... I am no good man. Nothing's spoiled by giving them this lie." (126) He attempts to calm his pride by telling himself that the other accused witches who will not give false testimony to save themselves from the gallows have every right to do so; they led lives free of blame. He, however, he tells himself, did no such thing; what right has he to hang among the righteous? "Let them that never lied die now to keep their souls. It is pretense for me, a vanity that will nor blind God nor keep my children out of the wind." (126) Thus the conviction first reached by John Proctor is to save his life rather than to throw it away in mock martyrdom.
Ending in death most foul, “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” feature revenge and a painstaking cruelty. Pushed to the point of insanity and retribution sought over trivialities, the narrators tell each story by their own personal account. The delivery of their confessions gives a chilling depth to the crimes they have committed and to the men themselves. Both men are motivated by their egos and their obsessions with their offenders. Prompted by their own delusions, each man seeks a violent vengeance against his opposition in the form of precise, premeditated homicide.
There are many ways to decide what makes a man guilty. In an ethical sense, there is more to guilt than just committing the crime. In Charles Brockden Browns’ Wieland, the reader is presented with a moral dilemma: is Theodore Wieland guilty of murdering his wife and children, even though he claims that the command came from God, or is Carwin guilty because of his history of using persuasive voices, even though his role in the Wieland family’s murder is questionable? To answer these questions, one must consider what determines guilt, such as responsibility, motives, consequences, and the act itself. No matter which view is taken on what determines a man’s guilt, it can be concluded that Wieland bears the fault in the murder of Catharine Wieland and her children.
Secondly, the warders, magistrates, and other men of the like fully understand the act they are seemingly mitting daily. The narrator describes at the end of the story that “We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.” To many readers the horror of that statement hits them like a brick wall. With the force of how odd these men are to be having a drink after killing a man, even the fact that they are smiling and laughing is
He writes, ‘Many simply denied that they had any choice. Faced with the testimony of others, they did not contest that Trapp had made the offer but repeatedly claimed that they had not heard that part of his speech or could not remember it (p. 315). Sometimes, when a person does a terrible thing and is going through a trial, the person tells himself that they are innocent so many times that they end up convincing themselves that they are innocent. ‘As one man admitted, it was not until many years later that he began to consider that what he had done had not been right. He had not given it a thought at the time (p.315).’ This can be compared to David Cash’s story. David Cash was at a casino in Las Vegas with a peer. David’s friend followed an unwatched girl into a restroom, and the two began throwing toilet paper at each other. David’s friend, Jeremy Strohmeyer, took the young girl into a stall and ended up abusing her. David entered the restroom as Strohmeyer was taking the girl into the stall and peeked over the stall wall to see what was unfolding. David did nothing about Jeremy’s actions and left the bathroom. Jeremy followed about 20 minutes later and immediately confessed to killing the girl. David was questioned for a long time afterwards about not taking action and his innocence, but he felt that he had done nothing wrong. Both David and some Reserve Police
The Speaker in ‘My Last Duchess’ is conversing with the servant of a count whose daughter he is proposing to marry. He treats t...