2013년 4월 16일 화요일

Reading Journal 5: Catalyst for the reality: Magic Realism

World Literature Class (Senior)
Reading "The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World" & "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
Watching "Being John Malkovich" by Spike Jonze
Reflective Essay #5
April 16, 2013

Catalyst for the reality: Magic Realism

Magic Realism is a genre where magical elements are blended with realistic descriptions and settings. Compared to what had been so far discussed and what had been so far dominated 1900s, This relatively new genre seems to have come out from nowhere: Starting from realism through modernism to post-modernism, there had been a tradition in the field of literature to portray objects in sincere, honest tone. Though some form of transcendentalism was used in an attempt to uncover confound, profound meanings, there never had been a genre that is so unrealistic like magic realism.

Raising the question of its origin, there accompanies the question asking about the meaning beneath this genre: What is this genre for? Does it educate people? Does it give us lessons? Because magic realism literature contains magical element, its situation seems completely off to our world, thus arguably raising the question of its meaning. Since it seems distant to our world, it seems that this magic realism doesn't give us any lessons or any leftovers except catharsis from magical things. So what does this genre stand for? Only joy? 

Here I raise somewhat different perspective in analyzing magic realism. Other than joy or catharsis that is aroused from magical elements, I would like to state that magic realism has its importance in revealing "whatness", or essence of us, normal ones reacting to magical incidents. Magical element in magic realism, I would state, has distinct meaning in this genre in that it acts as a catalyst for the normal world. It is not the magical element itself that is important, but rather it is our reaction to the magic. Given such frustrating situation, the situation that we had never confronted before, we, beings of the normal world, demonstrates various reaction to the magic. And the deepest meaning of magic realism, I believe, lies here. How we encounter and overcome this magical elements are things that magic realism literature wants to observe: for instance, in the case of "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", distinct characters react in different ways: The main characters of the story, Pelayo and Elisenda, earns money from the magical element descended from heaven, an old man with wings. They gradually thinks of this old man as a source for their living, and the reverence and fear they had on this angel gradually wanes. Meanwhile, people who came to see this angel commit violent things to the man to see his reaction such as throwing stones or even "burning his sides with an iron for branding steers". Their interest however is transmitted to a more interesting figure, a woman who turned into a spider. Here we see how normal ones act upon magical element: underlying capitalism or cruelty is then revealed after they encounter this magic. In the case of "The Handsomest Drowned Man in The World", the reactions of villagers (children, women, and men) are intensively described along with the portrayal of incidents. The case of magic realism movie "Being John Malkovich" too demonstrates the essence of the people, whereas the character attempts to fulfill her lesbian fantasies through a magical element that leads her to go inside to a man's body.

Magic Realism indeed give us joy and catharsis from incidents that never would seem to happen to us, but it is not the only role of this genre. Through magical elements, this genre seeks to dig into our essence, our true identity. In this sense, the magical element in magic realism literature is a mirror that reveals and reflects our inner selves.



2013년 3월 27일 수요일

Reading Journal 4: "The Dead" by James Joyce

World Literature Class (Senior)
Reading "The Dead" by James Joyce
Reflective Essay #4
Mar. 28, 2013


              Some tend to criticize the lengthiness of “The Dead” while highlighting its articulate epiphany at the end. Those people complain about the whole loose part at the front which doesn’t directly deal with the problem which will later be brought up to the issue of epiphany. Even though I agree that the part until to reach the epiphany is quite long, I share different perspective from others in that I believe this part is somewhat essential in bringing the story to the moment of epiphany. Epiphany, experience of sudden realization within one’s situation, ironically should not come out of nowhere, or else its emotion might not be fully sympathized with the readers. Imagine “The Dead” with only the last part with epiphany. Without knowing how Gabriel thinks of himself, his wife Gretta, or all others he met, his reaction to Gretta’s story of her first love and his alternation of the emotion towards Gretta from frustration to “a strange, friendly pity for her”. If story didn’t tell of Gabriel’s supper speech which speaks of cherishing “the memory of those dead” and his firm statement to not “linger on the past”, would the eruption of emotion have been the same? Rather, it is this previous stance of him that emphasizes the sudden change within his belief and allows for more dramatic scene. Especially with James Joyce, Joyce tends to have his own way of dramatizing the epiphany, by putting a delineation of his sublime awareness of his own problem, as can be seen in his recognition of himself unable to control others to think of him as “airing his superior education”. By foreshadowing the event and implying the readers that the protagonist knew of his problem beforehand, Joyce furthermore develops what is to be destructed in his Joycean Epiphany. This nature, to develop in order to destruct, perhaps is what the epiphany is all about, how Joyce comes to be widely recognized and renowned.


==============================================================================

Behind the stage

Imagine a grandiose show: all the beautiful actors and actresses, bright spotlight, majestic music from a well-organized piece, variety of stage equipment that captures audiences' sight.....The plot goes on..... And....The show reaches its climax.

All the audiences rise up from their chair and give their unstinting, endless applaud towards the stage.

But, what about the things and the people behind the stage?




In order to bring one show, numerous staffs whose names don't even get an infinitesimal amount of spotlight undergo several severe, complicated tasks. Throughout their arduous efforts, the show is finally possible to be put on the stage and to meet its audiences. However, many audiences do not acknowledge the important roles of these shadow-like people. They only applaud at the main character, or the climax scene. Though the people behind the stage take a huge part in the show, they do not get acknowledged well to the viewers.

Epiphany, I believe, shares the same structure with the show stated above. The moment of epiphany is astounding not only for the protagonist in the story, but also for the readers of the story. For a highly well structured epiphany, critics with no doubt praises the piece and shed lights on this unique moment. Compared to the light that the epiphany gets on the stage, rest of the writing seems relatively dark.

For this reason, some tend to criticize the lengthiness of “The Dead” while highlighting its articulate epiphany at the end. Some complains about the whole loose part at the front which doesn't directly deal with the problem which will later be brought up to the issue of epiphany. So, was it mandatory for James Joyce to have the long stretched front part of the story to bring up this short epiphany?

“Yes,” would be my answer, for I believe they are essential to bring an eruption of emotions at the moment of epiphany. I believe the moment of epiphany is a star on the stage which essentially has to be backed up by the staffs behind the stage. My position here has its root of reasoning in the ironical state of the epiphany. Epiphany is usually defined as an experience of sudden and striking realization. Here I would like to focus on the word ‘sudden’, for I think the epiphany cannot wholly come out ‘suddenly’: Certain antecedents always come before the epiphany.

Imagine, if you were only given the part of the story “The Dead” of which the main protagonist Gabriel is exposed to the past memory of his wife Gretta’s first love Michael Furey, who “died for her sake.” Would you be able to sympathize with Gabriel about his description of his own emotions that arouses from hearing Furey’s story? Probably you will have more hard time to actually ‘feel like him’.

As stated above, there is this irony in the literary usage of epiphany; the narrator has to illustrate a lot beforehand for short laconic epiphany to come afterward. And especially for Joycean epiphany, I believe three distinctive illustrations appear in almost all stories of James Joyce: Sublime recognition of one’s own problem, aspects in the character to be broken, and the outside force that comes to demolish this characteristic within the protagonist.

Sublime recognition takes place as he acknowledges of himself being too antique for the society, in the narrator's quote of "they would think that he(Gabriel) was airing his superior education". Sublime recognition complicates readers' emotion as the epiphany, conscious recognition is then to be highlighted, and to be sympathized and to be missed in the belief he might have fixed the problem before the epiphany in disastrous way to take its place. This, I believe, is what makes Joycean Epiphany to be different from that of other previous writers.

In addition to the sublime recognition, outside force that shakes the main protagonist should take place before the epiphany. Here, his constant conflict with women, as seen in the conversation with Miss Ivors and her speaking of "West Briton" to Gabriel, gradually overtime Gabriel is confronted to the problem understanding the women. His stack of facing challenges are then popped out as his wife Gretta speaks of her first love, and the epiphany then takes place.

Then, there is this unique characteristic in the protagonist to be broken, as seen in Gabriel's own dinner speech of cherishing “the memory of those dead” and his firm statement to not “linger on the past”. In order for the epiphany, break of his consciousness or his characteristic, to take place, something must be built beforehand. It is this previous stance of him that dramatizes his shock and his epiphany.



James Joyce's epiphany, I believe, is different from that of others in the aspect that he can dramatize the moment of epiphany in a realistic way by delineating and giving background information humbly and in length. After all, I believe it is these elements behind the stage that make Joycean epiphany special.

2013년 3월 20일 수요일

Reading Journal 3: One paragraph writing of the story "Araby", in by James Joyce

World Literature Class (Senior)
Reading "Araby" by James Joyce
Reflective Essay #3
Mar. 20, 2013 (Revised in Mar. 28)

Reading Journal 3: One paragraph writing of the story "Araby", in <Dubliners> by James Joyce


From a distance, James Joyce’s "Araby" might appear to be a story of an innocent boy who experiences a sudden turning point within his maturation process. After all, when the nameless narrator enters the bazaar and by a chance hears a conversation of a young lady and two gentlemen, the story clearly shows that the epiphany dramatically overwhelms the boy: The nameless boy consciously recognizes the discrepancy between the reality and his ideal in love and life. However, on the other hand, it is doubtful to say that this epiphany is the only moment where his maturity is developed in the story. Although the epiphany, his maturation within the conscious level, happens only once at the end, his maturation within his subconscious level takes place in the story long before the bitter epiphany strikes him in his head. In fact, his subconscious maturation is portrayed within the plot as the boy feels sexual attraction to Mangan’s sister: This is explicitly spoken by the narrator within his delineation of some physical charm points of the girl, such as in the portrayal of “the white curve of her neck” or “the white border of a petticoat”. Therefore, it is perhaps more accurate to assume that "Araby" is not a story of an innocent boy who all of a sudden is exposed to the bitter secular reality, but rather a story of a normal teenager boy who was already experiencing a subconscious maturation process but then directly confronted to the maturation in the conscious level, the epiphany. In this sense, it is accountable to say that the boy’s confrontation of the epiphany was not an unfortunate incidence, but rather a deserved, inevitable, and already foreshadowed “rite of passage” from his subconscious maturation process.

2013년 2월 26일 화요일

Reading Journal 2 - Scope of Realism Toward Romanticism 2

World Literature Class (Senior)
Reading "The Lady With The Dog" by Anton Chekhov
Reflective Essay #2
Feb. 26, 2013 (Revised in Feb. 26)

"The Lady With The Dog" - Scope of Realism Toward Romanticism 2

-Debunking Romanticism-


Part. 1 General Overview of Previously Mentioned Concepts

So far, I've talked about Anton's short story, "The Student." In the essay written before this, I've discussed about why his story can be interpreted as Realism writing, though it may share some of the elements that can possibly be found on Romanticism writing: This is because he adventured Romanticism through the scope of Realism. By depicting his romantic protagonist in dry and ascetic manner, Anton revealed his experiment of "decorating Romanticism with Realism". In other words, Anton, in Realism manner, observed a life of Romantic one in his writing "The Student".

Part. 2 Overall Summary of "The Lady With The Dog"


Here, another short story of Anton, "The Lady With The Dog", is presented. The story is about the incident of a man and a woman who unexpectedly find each other attractive in their little vacation in Yalta. Both of them have their own family. However, this does not burden them from meeting each other, at least for the man, Dmitri. The woman, Anna Sergeyavna is more reluctant to accept her emotion of love towards the man: She continuously fights her morals and her past memory of strained life. They are forced to be parted from each other after short vacation, nevertheless their love does not vanish. In Moscow, Dmitri, after failing to ignore his sincere emotion, goes to meet Anna, and dramatically finds each other at the theater performing "Geisha". Like Dmitri, Anna missed Dmitri and confess him that she is in true love with him. And the story ends as Anna tells Dmitri to meet again in Moscow.

Although some found this easier to read than "The Student", I found it somewhat harder to read: Though there aren't much impressive descriptions or stylistic vocabulary presented in the writing, "The Lady With The Dog" required readers to follow its tone and mood until the end. If the thing that mattered in "The Student" was its content, the thing that mattered in "The Lady With The Dog" was rather its tone- how Anton portrays the love between two married ones: adultery.

Part. 3 Adultery


Adultery refers to the voluntary intercourse between a married man and someone other  his or her lawful spouse. As you examine the tone and the style which Anton portrays in the affair between Dmitri and Anna, you can see that he is depicting their romantic affair with Realistic approach. Be careful to not interpret this statement as a devaluation of Anton's work or as I didn't feel any romantic mood in the writing. In fact, I thought that the description that Dmitri provided was really intimate and romantic. Again, it doesn't have to do with the narrator: IT IS a romantic incident, but the point is that Anton tries not to distort this Romanticism: He is carrying on realism in depicting Romanticism.


Part. 4 Realism in "The Lady With The Dog" 

            Q: Why did Anton do so?
           A: To debunk Romanticism!

The remaining question is why Anton wrote like this: What is the purpose of this writing?   Yes, it may be inappropriate to seek the intention of the writing in a Realism piece, because in many cases the purpose within a Realism piece is about the existence and the expression of the writing itself, but still curiosity led me to question why Anton wrote this story.

In this short story, Anton is depicting Romantic situation of adultery. In the writing itself, there seems to be no explicit indications that prohibits or criticizes the action of these two: the adultery. Within the writing, narrator is objectively depicting the beauty within the moment of the adultery. What does this imply? Why did Anton choose the adultery to take place in his writing, and why didn't he add morals or ethics within the adultery?

Soon, I came up to this conclusion that Anton is criticizing Romanticism by debunking its poor aspect: Romanticism writing tends to beautify our life, and it often seems to ignore the righteousness of the action - Romanticism just beautifies our lives no matter what the situation is. From this perspective, I believe Anton carried out a message to debunk this crack within Romanticism. He, I believe, went on to the extreme and found this theme of "adultery" and wrote the Romanticism depiction of the adultery in his writing. Giving warning to not beautify every aspects of our lives, Anton wrote this article to criticize Romanticism in Realism manner.

This interpretation may be inaccurate as we can never for sure know the original intention behind the writer, but as the attempt to find meaning and to engage with the author is a highly-appreciated activity within the field of literature, I believe this interpretation is a sanguinary attempt to interpret Anton's short story, "The Lady With The Dog".

2013년 2월 17일 일요일

Reading Journal 1 - Scope of Realism Toward Romanticism

English Composition Class (Senior)
Reading "The Student" by Anton Chekhov
Reflective Essay #1
Feb. 13, 2013 (revised in Feb. 17, 2013)

"The Student" - Scope of Realism Toward Romanticism



The short story “The Student” by Anton Chekhov is such a renowned piece that it has created several issues and debates about the message and the theme imposed on the writing. Besides from his use of vocabulary, the plot itself is quite a complicated one, yet simple and short in length.

The overall summary of “The Student” is about a pious experience of Ivan, the son of a sacristan, who suddenly perceives the power of his words throughout his storytelling. He, after going out to hunting, visits the house of two widows (a mom and a daughter) on his way to home and tell them the story of Apostle Peter in the Bible. While warming his body by sitting aside to the fire, he unwinds the story of Apostle Peter, who denied his knowing of Jesus three times at the last night before the death of Jesus. By telling this story, Ivan made two widows cry, and as he walks out of the place, he feels great catharsis in that he made two widows share their tears.

Recognizing the fact that the genre, especially on the category of realism, of this writing was on the debate, this essay would like to add a further step on the issue about whether it is appropriate to view this literature as realism literature. Though it may not be correct to define a piece of writing and characterize it certainly as a writing of one genre in a holistic manner, this essay would like to provide opinions and supporting claims on viewing this literal piece as a realism writing by focusing on the theme implied and the plot implanted in the writing.


Part. 1               Stuffs in general: Realism and Romanticism – Depiction of the reality


First time reading this writing makes some readers to wonder the message within this short delineation of man’s storytelling. My first impression of this story was, “so what?” What is the meaning of this writing? What did Anton intend?

As I drilled into this chain of thoughts, at the end I began to question whether there should be any tangible meaning in the writing. And I also started to criticize upon my limited scope of the perception for the word “meaning.”

Meaning

Approaching to the profound analysis of the word “meaning”, two subjects should be involved in order to clarify the definition. Meaning can be created by either a writer or a reader. For the former one, meaning created by a writer is may be called an intention, and the latter one, meaning created by a reader, may be called an interpretation. Among these two, this essay will focus on the meaning intended by the writer.

There can be numerous and various categories for the meaning to be put into, but the category I would like to focus here is about the depiction: Sincerity in portraying the reality.

Depiction

Since what we perceive is from the reality, what we write is inevitably derived from our daily life. Therefore, the consideration about the depiction of our reality on the writing is no doubt a gist to analyzing a piece.

Tragedy and Comedy

Writer with his/her perception of the reality portrays, or sometimes creates the world of his own. Depending on the writer, the world that the writer created could be either honestly portrayed or deluded and distorted, exaggerated differently from the actual reality. The movement of depicting reality in tilted angle had developed from thousands of years ago, from Greeks who enjoyed tragedy and comedy in their plays. Their plays often aroused sympathy and dreadful challenges for protagonists in the branch of tragedy, or often evoked humors and satires among situations generated in their reality by giving a plot of the rise of in the fortune of the main character, in the name of comedy. Though the tone of these two genres seems to mark completely distinguishable area, they had one thing in common: they distorted and exaggerated the reality.


Romanticism

This tendency in the Literature was well descended to the major school of literature in 17th century, Romanticism. Romanticism literature refers to a literary movement and an array of literature lasted from about 1789 to 1832. Romanticism literature is characterized by its focus on sensational approach to our mundane lives, capturing the sentiments and evoking emotions in an extraordinary manner from our everyday lives. As the notion “romanticism” implies, it embellishes our common experience and uplifts the spirit or delivers a lesson in the writing.

Until the day of Realism to come, it would be appropriate to claim that there was some distance between the literature and the actual reality: Literature did not play a role of an honest portrayal of reality, but instead acted as a distorted depiction.


Realism

Behold, for the most relevant and important notion of this essay has come. Realism in literary term refers to a movement and the ideology of writing in which familiar, ordinary aspects of life are portrayed in a matter of fact, straightforward manner designed to reflect life as it actually is.

Main difference between realism and any other genre [school] of literature is that realism depicts the reality in honest sense, as the notion itself implies. So if any other literary movement was like a [picture of the reality], realism was like a [photograph of the reality].


Part. 2               Realism in “The Student” by Anton Chekhov

           Coming back to the discussion about the piece “The Student”, whether to view this writing as realism writing is controversial, mainly because of its portrayal of religious theme touching the sentiment of two widows in the story and the consequent catharsis that the protagonist feels. Since the sentiment portrayal of ordinary life and transfiguring them to extraordinary experience was a part closely related to Romanticism, some would even go over to claim that this piece is based on the romanticism. Projecting this array of doubts and rebutting them, this essay will confirm that this short story is realism writing.

Q1. Is it legitimate for realism writing to describe unconventional event? (Especially religious catharsis in this story)
           This story is based on the religious catharsis that one student feels in his storytelling. Since realism takes its root on accuracy and honesty of the depiction, this uncommon event and seemingly overdramatizing reaction of the protagonist seem to delude its realism characteristic.
           For my personal opinion, I think even this romanticism-like event come to play a part as a realism element. Just because we live ordinary lives doesn’t mean that we can’t have dramatic or tragic moment. Take for instance, the moment of death or love. Those themes do not obstruct realism to pass on: Though the theme may be dramatic, if the portrayal and description does not go beyond to dramatize the event, it may be still valid as realism writing. Realism may not be about dramatizing, but possibly can be about dramatic moments. The important thing is how and in what manner the story is portrayed, not the theme itself.
          

Q2. Can realism writing be optimistic?

           In the story “The Student”, there is an epic change in the mood and the tone of the protagonist. In the early part of the story, narrator depicts on the gloomy condition of the day: AT first the weather was fine and still. The thrushes were calling, and in the swamps close by something alive droned pitifully with a sound like blowing into an empty bottle. A snipe flew by, and the shot aimed at it rang out with a gay, resounding note in the spring air. But when it began to get dark in the forest a cold, penetrating wind blew inappropriately from the east, and everything sank into silence. Needles of ice stretched across the pools, and it felt cheerless, remote, and lonely in the forest. There was a whiff of winter.
           However, contrary to the tranquil manner of description in the first paragraph, story changes its mood and tone into more bright and cherishing one as the protagonist feels the gayness after he delivered tear-sharing story, as the narrator mentions that “joy stirred in his soul”.
           Change in the tone of the story from pessimistic one to optimistic one lets readers to shake their heads, for it is unconventional to have a cheerful catharsis of the protagonist in the realism writing at the end. This part thus makes people to wonder if this story really is a realism piece.
           Because of its contrasting characteristic compared to Romanticism, Realism writing was often revealed in pessimistic tone. Considering that Realism marked the end to the Romanticism era where people sought values and beauties in everyday life and came out as a counter pulse, inclination of the Realists to use pessimistic tone is not very surprising. However, as long as it accurately with no needless decoration describes the actual reality, I believe that it can still be called realism writing.
          

Difference in protagonist, narrator, and writer

           But if anybody asks me whether the protagonist in the writing is in the category of romanticist, I would agree. There are many evidences that Ivan is a romanticist: the plot that he falls into catharsis by little ordinary experience is an instance. So to conclude, this story can be referred as the “realism writing about a romanticist.” Here, we have to carefully draw the line between the protagonist, narrator, and writer. Protagonist himself is a romanticist, the narrator is in third person omniscient perspective, and writer by utilizing the narrator depicts realism in a romanticist-like character. One reason some would claim this short story to be a romanticism piece lies in this reason- misconception and the fail to recognize the differences upon those three different conceptions.


           Thus, I believe that the short story “The Student” by Anton Chekhov is actually a realism-piece as most people think, and I would like to define this story as a “Scope of Realism Toward Romanticism”.
          

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Other indirect references:


http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1509265

http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/70/anton-chekhov-and-the-development-of-the-modern-character

http://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/anthony/20CKoreanLit.pdf

2012년 6월 10일 일요일

Death Sentence to Furthermore Crimes











Death Sentence to Furthermore Crimes
Proposition for the Death Penalty













Submitted to: Mr. Garrioch
By: Lee Jun Suk (Seok)
Student ID: 111111
For: English Composition
On: Monday, June 11th, 2012




We may feel the sense of horror and cruelty as the first impression towards the word ‘death penalty’. The action, killing a person, involved in this word gives us the sense that such proposition is barbaric and unethical. However, more rational approach beyond our emotional impression is required to see the real nature of this problem. Considering the effects that the death penalty towards the first-degree murderers will bring to our society, such as bringing upright order of the society, deterring the future crimes, and reducing the burden of the society for keeping a prisoner, proposition is reasonable and thus should be adapted to our society.
First of all, the death penalty benefits the society in the aspect that it brings upright order of the society. J. Budziszewki, Professor of Government and Philosophy at the Univerisity of Texas, speaks clearly about this point:
"Society is justly ordered when each person receives what is due to him. Crime disturbs this just order, for the criminal takes from people their lives, peace, liberties, and worldly goods in order to give himself undeserved benefits. Deserved punishment protects society morally by restoring this just order, making the wrongdoer pay a price equivalent to the harm he has done. This is retribution, not to be confused with revenge, which is guided by a different motive. In retribution the spur is the virtue of indignation, which answers injury with injury for public good.”(Budziszewki)
The purpose of punishment in some perspective is to give the suspected one the fair price for his action. If one does not get adequate penalty, it would harm the just order of the society. Some counter-argument for this statement will be provided in the manner that the death penalty will just play as a revenging tool, but the death penalty, which is retribution of the crime, is different from revenge in the aspect that retribution is acted until punishment is fair while revenge is acted until grievance is vanished. Also the aspect that the goal of retribution is to achieve just order of the society while goal of revenge is to achieve one’s pleasure makes the difference. Thus, the death penalty should be done in the manner of retribution of the crime in order to bring just order within the society.
Second, the death penalty fulfills a responsibility to protect the lives of innocent citizens, and enacting the death penalty may save lives by reducing the rate of violent crime. In recent years, there were some cases where the imprisoned first-degree murderers came back to the society and committed revenge to the family of victims for putting him in jail. The victims of the crime will live in fear of meeting again the criminal if the criminal has a chance of coming back to the society. The opposition, the advocates of the murderers’ rights, has to think about threatened human rights and endangered lives of victims before claiming human rights of murderers. In addition, the death penalty benefits the society by contributing in reducing the crime rate. For the case of Kansas, the murder rates per 100,000 inhabitants slowly reduced from 6.7 in 1994 to 3.5 in 2010 as they started the execution of the death penalty in 1994. The case of New York clearly shows the effect of death penalty as it is the state where it adopted death penalty in 1995 and ended the death penalty in 2007. The murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants in New York was increasing from 9.5 in 1985 to 13.3 in 1993. As it adopted the death penalty at 1995, it experienced gradual decrease from 8.5 in 1995 to 4.5 in 2010. The opposition for death penalty claims that it will have no impact in eliminating the further crimes, since one does not really think of death sentence he will get in the moment he commits a crime, but the result clearly shows the success of death penalty. The reason for this success can be found out in the social atmosphere it creates. Once the death penalty is announced within the society, the social atmosphere towards crimes will become very cold thus awakening collective intelligence for the murders. Not only statistics show the evidence of effectiveness of death penalty, but also the researches show the evidence. “I personally am opposed to the death penalty,” said H. Naci Mocan, an economist at Louisiana State University and an author of a study finding that each execution saves five lives. “But my research shows that there is a deterrent effect.”(Liptak)
Last but not least, the death penalty lessens the burdens of the society that occurs from keeping more prisoners. If death penalty is not on its place, more funding should be made for keeping murderers at prisons. "We particularly need the support and cooperation of the legislature with the immediate funding and implementation of AB 109," California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary Matthew Cate said in a statement (Martinez). Also, the director of Shrewsbury prison, Juliet Lyon, said: "Simply building more prisons is an expensive dead end. The only way to reserve prison for serious and violent offenders is to cut out all unnecessary use of breach and remand and tackle sentence inflation and the growth of indeterminate punishments (The Guardian). As more people commit crimes and therefore the demand for rooms for prisoners at instant moment is increasing at a great slope, some policy should be done about this problem. Not only spaces are the problems, but also the financial support for prisoners’ food is a considerable problem. We have to give them sufficient amount of food each day, and the financial burden of the society occurs at this moment. This money is based on the taxes gathered from innocent citizens, so the increase in the burden of society means the increase in the burden of innocent citizens right away. Death policy can solve out this two problems right away.
Opposition of the death penalty always argues that death policy is harming the basic human rights of the people by getting away their lives without their free wills. Yes, the death policy may indeed be killing a person. However, we have to think about the preventative role it will play for the society. People including victims don’t have to live in fear for meeting previous murderers, enjoy better lives with less murder rates, can spend less money for making the living for murderers. Considering the death penalty in those senses, I think the death penalty should be adapted in our society for less crime, for better future.




References

Martinez, Michael. “California officials: We'll fix prison crowding, won't free 33,000.” CNN, 24 May 2011.
The Guardian. “Two-thirds of prisons overcrowded.” The Guardian, 25 Aug. 2009.
Budziszewski. “Capital Punishment: The Case for Justice," OrthodoxyToday.org, Aug. 2004.
Liptak, Adam. “Does Death Penalty Save Lives? A New Debate.” The New York Times, 18 Nov. 2007.

2012년 5월 29일 화요일

THIS HOUSE SUPPORTS THE DEATH PENALTY


THIS HOUSE SUPPORTS THE DEATH PENALTY



     Actually, this was the first debate topic that I've got when I was on the debate team in my middle school. I chose this topic not just because this issue is familiar to me, but because this is what I really advocate on. Living in Korea for more than 17 years now, I heard too much about hideous crimes and too weak punishments. Also I heard numerous cases where weak punishments about the first-degree murderer led to more grudge crimes. Murderers who had fulfilled sentences often went to kill witnesses, prosecutors, or other people involved in the court case.
     The most common opposite argument for this issue would be about the basic human rights of that criminal. They might say, even though what they have done is against our ethics and is wrong, we still don't have right to take away their rights. Furthermore, they will also argue about the sadness and tragedy that will occur to the family and close friends of the one. However, I will rebut this argument by giving two arguments which will support death penalty policy.
      The first supporting argument will be about preventative role it will play for the society. If weak punishments occurs steadily, gradually people will have less awareness about committing crimes. This will then lead to the increase in the number of crimes. The death penalty will play preventative role for further crimes and will therefore stabilize the society.
      The second argument that the proposition side can bring is that the death penalty prevents the accused from committing further crimes. As mentioned above, accused will have hatred towards the prosecutors and eventually, as other cases show us, will lead to other crimes. The death penalty for first degree murderers will thus prevent possible crime that can happen in the future.
       With those two main arguments, I strongly support for the adoption of death penalty in Korea.



Soon, I will equip myself with bunch of evidences and statistics and come back! :)