A Crime Of Compassion, By Barbara Huttman

A comprehensive analysis of “A Crime of Compassion” In Barbara Huttmann’s story, she says “we all battled his disease for six months without ever giving death a thought.” This quote not only shows her attachment to Mac, but also the discouragement that cancer can give you. When analyzing Huttmann’s use of Irony in the title of the story, character development, and her motivation for letting Mac die, it is clear that her decision is justified.
The author uses irony in her title “A Crime of Compassion”. By calling her act “a crime” she is saying what she did was wrong. However, the entire story consists of her justifying that what she did was right. Compassion is defined as “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others”. …show more content…
The author describes Mac as “A young, witty, macho cop” in paragraph 4. She also mentioned his strength and how he looked as if he could “single-handedly protect the whole city, if not the entire state”. After thoroughly explaining his digression, Huttman, describes Mac as “a 60-pound skeleton”, only kept alive by the help of the nurses. This comparison shows that Mac was once strong and witty but through extensive cancer treatment, he became weak and fragile. The author describes what it looks like to see him losing his strength, losing his desire for life. The writing is intended to flood the reader with a sense of empathy for Mac, because he was once a young, strong, and life-loving …show more content…
This topic is often brought up with the loss of an ill loved one, or when a life is lost in the hands of a doctor or another medical professional. Sometimes, it is because the loved ones of patients are often experiencing grief and want someone to blame. In this case, the author talks about the wife of Mac, named Maura, and how she is emotionally strained and doesn’t want her husband to continue suffering. I think it’s important to understand this because it shows that even his wife, someone that loves him very much, would rather he be put out of his misery than to continue to “live” and suffer. Those who feel as if he had been “murdered” were not there in the room with him, watching him grow weaker and weaker everyday, begging for the nurses to just let him die. If they would have been able to understand the extent of his suffering, and the toll it took on the lives of those around him, they may not have judged the situation so harshly. They only knew the extremely black and white view of Mac’s death, that he had died when he still had a chance at