What Is The Theme Of Capital Punishment By Sherman Alexie

Throughout Sherman Alexie’s poem “Capital Punishment” the narrator changes his perspective of the Indian man who killed a white person. At first the narrator only talks about the murder that the man committed, referring to him as a killer. However, as the poem progresses the narrator begins to feel connected with him, even showing signs of love. By the end of the poem the narrator transforms his view of the Indian, referring to him not as a killer, but as a man.
The narrator’s transformation begins on the first line. The narrator begins by taking the Indian’s order for his final meal, as he is to soon be executed. Unlike many people on death row, the “killer doesn’t want much: / baked potato, salad, tall glass of ice water” (lines 3-4). …show more content…
He has never witnessed one but describes how he has to “turn off the kitchen lights / and sit alone in the dark” due to the fact that when the chair turns on the entire prison dims (lines 48-49). He remembers this moment as if it was his “first kiss / or the first hard kick to [his] groin” (lines 55-56). He become worried about the execution and really begin to show his affection towards the Indian when he begins having trouble trying not to look at the clock. The narrator reveals his relationship with the Indian, by revealing that he “tasted a little of that last meal before [he] sent it away”, since it was his job (lines 65-66). The narrator goes even further by admitting that he ate off of the same plate and used the same utensils that the Indian was going to use. The climax of the narrator’s relationship with the Indian comes when he questions that “maybe a little bit of me / lodged in his stomach, wedged between his front teeth, his incisors, his molars” (lines 71-73). This reveals that the narrator is thinking about the Indian, and is upset that he is about to be executed. This anger about his departure comes out when he rants about the death penalty, citing Americans obsession with …show more content…
Even when he tried his hardest to overlook the fact that it was taking place he could not ignore it when it happened. Prime evidence of this is witnessed several times in the poem. Throughout the poem the author states that he “[is] not a witness” (lines 5, 22, 41, 64, 79). Furthermore, the author goes out of his way to talk about other things than the Indian’s execution. He talks about how bad of a person the Indian was for killing a white man, but it doesn’t work. Then he focuses on preparing the final meal for the Indian, but that too doesn’t work. He talks about what they do when the execution takes place, but again that doesn’t work. The narrator, who had been struggling to contain his love for the Indian, loses all self-control when, while battling to not look at the clock, he talk about how much effort and affection he put in preparing the meal. Finally the narrator completely breaks down, when he goes on has rant about the death penalty. In the end the narrator exceeds expectations admitting that “[he] [is] a witness” (line 102). By doing this the gates break open as he concedes to the notion that he can’t handle it when people get executed, and that he had feelings for the Indian who had, in their mind, gone from a ruthless killer who deserves to die, to an innocent man who will forever be looked at in a way that they did not deserve. This is how the