Response #1
Giddings, Franklin. The Relation of the Criminal to Society. Proceedings of the Academy of
Political Science in the City of New York 1(4), 1911, 559-62.
This article asserts that some of the acts that the legislature defines as crimes are not actions that can cause much harm to the society and future generations, but there are acts that are defined as crimes that pose grave dangerous. Accordingly, the author notes that if one assumes that every person who commits a crime is a criminal then it is hard to find a person who is not a criminal in the United States. In this regard, the article presents two kinds of ‘criminals’: one kind that is made up of people who commit certain acts that are defined as crimes out of curiosity and the second kind consists of people who commit criminal acts habitually. According to Giddings, the society should be concerned about the habitual criminals because they “habitually make war upon society” (559). He rightly notes that the effect of treating every person that commits a single crime as a criminal is that society increases the bracket of criminals to unprecedented levels, but also observes that if the society becomes too lenient to individuals who commits an offense often then it would be wrong. According to the article, the main function of the justice system is to make all people equal before the law in order to create a social system where people can get together and solve their issues through mental and moral processes. The author rejects the idea of treating first offenders as criminals regardless of the offence they commit noting that such an approach only creates more challenges to the criminal justice system.
Response #2
Differences between the two main characters as criminals in The Cask of the Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe and Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell
Various similarities exist between the main characters in The Cask of the Amontillado and Shooting an Elephant in terms of the criminal elements that the two display in their respective crimes. In The Cask of the Amontillado, Montresor enjoys revenge killing. In this regard, the fact that he plans killing other people is evidence of his mens rea while the fact that he carries out the killings constitutes his actus reus. Montresor’s reason for killing Fortunato is that the latter assaulted his family. In the end, Montresor is glad that he planned the revenge as evidenced by his perception that he not only wants to punish Fortunato, he wants to do it with impunity. The manner in which Montresor plans the killing by luring Fortunato to the underground tunnels and tombs, and the fact that he goes ahead to commit the murder proves that his acts meet all the elements of a crime.
On the other hand, in the Shooting an Elephant, Orwell is not as eager to kill the elephant at the beginning. However, when he feels the pressure of the people in the marketplace, he decides to kill the elephant to please them with the hope that the people in the town will no longer taunt him. Orwell sends for his riffle and when it is brought, he shoots the elephant. It is important to note that Orwell’s actions reveal the presence of actus reus but it is difficult to prove mens rea by virtue of the fact that he did not plan to kill the elephant and his action is influenced by others’ perception of him. In fact, Orwell says, “I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool” (Davis 318). This shows that Orwell does not kill the elephant out of his own free will.
Response #3
The poems Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats present criminals in the form of mythology and fairy tales. The poem provides a description of a girl being raped by a swan (Yeats n. pag). The fact that the poem is set during the early 20th century Greece, one can reasonably conclude that the author tells of a Greek mythology where a girl is raped by the Zeus god who commits the crime in form of a swan. Accordingly, the way the author describes the manner in which the swan commits the violent crime and the way it overwhelms Leda depicts violent crimes as something that humans are simply not able to deal with. This is particularly because the Yeats portrays violent crimes as acts that emanate from the gods, and the fact that humans have to do what the gods direct them to do, the poem depicts such crimes as beyond the comprehension of human beings.
The fact that Leda becomes pregnant from the rape and gives birth to a woman who eventually triggers the Trojan War, shows strong indication that violent crimes are indirect acts of war. Accordingly, the details that the poet uses, including the imagery and poetic sensibilities, portray violent crimes as a work of art whose outcome can be used by the perpetrators for political purposes. This is evidenced by the fact that the product of the rape, Helen of Troy, becomes the main cause of the Trojan War in the context of the Ancient Greek mythology.
Work Cited
Davis, Roger and Laura K. Davis. Essay Writing for Canadian Students with Readings, Eighth
Edition. Ontario: Pearson Canada Inc., 2016.
Giddings, Franklin. The Relation of the Criminal to Society. Proceedings of the Academy of
Political Science in the City of New York 1(4), 1911, 559-62.
Yeats, William. Leda and the Swan. Windows to the Universe. 2012. Web. 5 May 2016.
http://www.windows2universe.org/art_and_music/ledaswan.html
