Ready Reference Treatise: Dead Man Walking

By Raja Sharma

“Dead Man Walking” by Sister Helen Prejean was first published in 1993. It is a work of non-fiction. The author is a Roman Catholic nun, one of the sisters of Saint Joseph Medaille.

She was a spiritual advisor to two convicted murderers who were waiting death sentence. The present book is based on her experiences while she was working as a spiritual advisor.

The book is set at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. The author explores the serious moral issues that are related to the capital punishment.

Ready Reference Treatise: Dead Man Walking
Copyright
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Plot Overview
Chapter Three: Characters
Chapter Four: Complete Summary
Chapter Five: Critical Analysis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: Jun 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310775079

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma is a retired college lecturer.He has taught English Literature to University students for more than two decades.His students are scattered all over the world, and it is noticeable that he is in contact with more than ninety thousand of his students.

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Ready Reference Treatise: Dead Man Walking

Copyright

Ready Reference Treatise: Dead Man Walking

Raja Sharma

Copyright@2015 Raja Sharma

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Chapter One: Introduction

Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean was first published in 1993. It is a work of non-fiction. The author is a Roman Catholic nun, one of the sisters of Saint Joseph Medaille.

She was a spiritual advisor to two convicted murderers who were waiting death sentence. The present book is based on her experiences while she was working as a spiritual advisor.

The book is set at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. The author explores the serious moral issues that are related to the capital punishment.

She is one of the leading American advocates for the abolition of capital punishment. She began her campaign in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the year 1982. She began her campaign through her correspondence that she maintained with two convicted murderers.

The convicted murders were Elmo Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie. Sonnier was to be executed by electric chair.

While he had been waiting for his death sentence, the author met her in prison and agreed to become his spiritual advisor during the months which lay before the death sentence.

Likewise, she became Robert Lee Willie’s spiritual advisor. During her interaction with those convicted murderers, she learned a lot about the process of executions and the psychology of convicted murderers. Through her experience with the convicted murderers she concluded that death penalty was morally wrong.

She began speaking openly against death penalty. While running her campaign against the death penalty, she founded an organization called Survive. This organization is basically devoted to giving counsel to the families of the victims of violence and injustice.

The title Dead Man Walking comes from a phrase that was once very popular and traditional in American prisons. This phrase used to be designated to a prisoner who used to be condemned to death.

Before the 2960s, while leading a condemned man down the jail hallway, they would call out, Dead man walking! Dead man walking here! However, there have always been controversies over this phrase and its origin has always been debated.

It is also assumed that the guards would use this phrase to warn the staff or prisoner. Through this warning they, perhaps, wanted the prisoners and staff to be on their guard because a dead man going to be executed does not have anything to lose, so he might be violent.

Some social scientists and scholars also believe that this phrase was actually a kind of honorific declamation, meant to give honor to the man to be executed.

It told the prisoners and the staff that they should see the condemned man to be executed as an elite within the prison system.

There are some other theories about the origin of this phrase

. It is also said that this call Dead man walking! may have been a stigma attached to the condemned man, to warn others nearby that they should not touch him so that they won’t catch his bad luck. It can be taken as a symbol that