Capital Punishment within the Short Story, ‘Two Fishermen’

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Capital punishment is the legal execution of a person who has committed a crime. There are 5 ways of execution: hanging, electric chair, gas chamber, firing squad and lethal injection. In 1865 Canada implemented capital punishment and in 1976 is was abolished from our law. In between those years capital punishment was used when someone killed someone else, raped someone and then killed them or committed treason. In 1962 the last executions in Canada took place and in 1966 capital punishment was only used when a police officer or prison guard was killed.

If the short story “Two Fishermen” written by Morley Callaghan was based in Canada the year would be several years before 1962. It is clear that capital punishment is alive and well in the story and the fact that the hangman is always travelling around and getting new jobs all the time, lets us know the many executions are going on. I believe that Thomas Delaney should not have been killed for multiple reasons. The first being that Thomas Delaney was already quite young and he shouldn’t be judged the same as others especially due to the reason he killed that man. The second reason is that he has a good reason to kill this man. The man was molesting his wife and he came in to her defence, therefore i believe that his actions are justified as his murder can be defined as coming to the aid of another.

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