Continuous Relevance to ‘Unspeakable Wrongness’ in Orwell’s A Hanging: A Transitivity Analysis

This paper is an interdisciplinary study of Orwell’s queer-literary genre piece i.e. “A Hanging” with an insight into the “unspeakable wrongness” across that 1931short story / essay by the application of Halliday’s linguistic tool of “Transitivity”. The functional linguistic theory of transitivity is very instrumental in exploring “ideational meaning” about the “on-goings” of characters’ material and mental world as expressed and documented in literature. Albeit comparatively less noticed, Orwell’s “A Hanging” is a superb experiential documentation of his intolerance and disapproval of all unspeakable wrongness in all forms found in “colonialism”, “imperialism”, and “capital punishment”, discovery of all of which through the story has an extended significance and current century relevance. The study comes up with a convincing “cosmopolitan call” for the abolishment of capital punishment. Orwell goes as a narrator mentally aloof from his imperialist fellows and stands as one “odd out” with a deciphered “antiimperialistic” impulse inside him which marks out colonialism as the very wrong “metamorphosing” power that is in itself demoralizing and makes it a huge impossibility of “equity” among universal humanity. Orwell ended up with a “Geliliolic discovery” of imperialism paving the way of only “oppression and deprivation” of the colonized and injecting a “generic moral decay” inside them; so Orwell cuts his professional “cohortship” with this giant, wrong, inhuman system that practices farfetched, unconvincing “power imbalance” on earth by taking away the powerless races’ “freedom of speech”, and that bursts into a large scale of “moral decay” and “hollowness” of human hearts.


INTRODUCTION
Orwell study has long been a focal interest for the scholars who particularly consider exploring deep into "colonialism" and "post colonialism". Amongst all the writers with these themes anchored and gathered in their writings, Orwell is the most widely read and influential serious writer of the 20th century" (Meyers, 2010). His writings serve as the documentation of how his own big belonging part of British imperialists were going around colonizing distant, diverse lands across globe especially Asia and Africa. From very close quarters, Orwell came up with his individual, painful observation of the English super power's colonizing others' lands, imposing ruthless rules, alien manners and customs, and religious beliefs on the indigenous races and groups who have their own long living identities and values, and cultural patterns. He was accumulating a strong zeal and enthusiasm to fight "fascism" and to defend democracy from "a sense of obligation" (ibid) as his political stance. Also inspired by the same zeal and responsibility and ethics, Orwell in his writer's capacity was making his "written voice" of unspoken intolerance and disapproval of all kinds of flaws and inhuman practices in the British colonialism. His passive-active "reluctance" to accept the "wrong-headed" actions and policies of the imperialists obviously come up in his writings. started abolishing it as a cruel, inhuman and barbarous system of killing a living man back in the days. In ancient Rome, in 553, capital punishment by hanging was abolished by a statue entitled Poreia Lex or Porcian Law. Exile was substituted for death. (Ohio General Assembly. House of Representatives, Durbin War, 1853). International perspectives on capital punishment convinced that capital punishment is "useless and inhuman" (Schabas & Schabas, 2002). Thus, internationally, capital punishment started gradually being abolished. In America, around the 19 th century, abolitionist movement grew and Michigan first abolished capital punishment permanently in 1846. Venezuela and Portugal abolished capital punishment in 1867 (ibid). Thus, in total, so far 102 countries have de jure abolished capital sentencing for all crimes. However, still fifty -eight countries -mostly Muslim and Asian ones-still retain this seriously debatable barbarous system (Chandler, 1976). Precisely, the opponents of capital punishment consider it as barbarous cruel method of punishment. They make a point that "experience demonstrates that capital punishment never yet made men better" (Stolz 1873). It is a systematic desire to cause pain and instantaneous death of a human being. Life sentence, forty years or so in prison, is thought to be more efficacious, self-corrective punishment system. Besides, it is also reported that "the death penalty is actually two to three times more expensive than life imprisonment" (Barkan, 2011). So, hanging is the twofold loss of life and money. Money can be earned, but life can not be. Again, the lost money can be regained but a lost life is never ever possible to get back. There is, of course, a conflicting view that for the interest of justice and fair treatment towards a convicted person, let' say, guilty of capital crimes and also towards the affected, capital punishment sounds appropriate and proportionate to capital crimes. But, which is preferred -punishment or cruelty? Killing someone is easier than punishing them because to punish someone means to cause them to suffer physically and mentally for long while death penalty is an instant physical "finality" by killing.

Orwell's biographical connection highlighted in his writings:
Apparently, literature is like ever the very expression of life and experiences either of others or of the authors themselves, at least occasionally. Thackeray (1884) puts that literature is essentially the expression of experience and emotion-of what we see. We as the readers always tend to connect and translate the facts and fiction found in a writing into the biographical basis as part of the whole thing. As obviously as I recollect from my own experience, days before I wrote a post on Facebook about "pornography addiction" generically enough, but one of my Facebook friends sought to figure out something of my personal pornography addiction to do with the basis of writing of the post, which he so curiously mentioned in his comment following the post. Eventually, some modern literary theories such as post-structuralism happen to cut literature off authors, categorically declaring that there is no fixed meaning of a text; readers can, not any surprise if they, make new meanings independent of the author. Nevertheless, rejecting the idea that author's biographical temptation doesn't get to do with the writing is practically impossible. In fact, to win scholarly the call of good build between author's biography and closer look into the wrongness depicted in his "A Hanging", Orwell's life history especially of his crucial police career days in Burma is so significant to look back at. To note most importantly is that "…biography is", in Johnston and Bailey's words (1906), "the literature of life. All literature is the expression of life of some kind; and since the noblest life is human life, the literature that deals with human life is the noblest literature." First of all, Orwell's writings are said to have its "roots in utopian and dystopian literature" Mendes,(2019), which is in Orwell's case a literary motivation for improvement of the colonizers' systems in the alien lands and on people, relying on the substantial basis of the speculated perfect life for persons in every aspect-economic, social, cultural, ecological, political and so forth. Born in a once-prosper but gradually declining family, Orwell spent few years of his childhood in Burma and then moved to England. Again, while his contemporaries were still at university in England, Orwell joined the British imperial police and took his posting in Burma in 1922 as his maternal grandmother was in Burma, a part of the then British India. He served a count of five years in Burma with a several changes of stations and with varying responsibilities. However, Orwell felt, as Stansky & Abrahams (1994) report, "an odd man out" among his British fellows. He didn't like the "the boring routine of police life" (ibid), which was a signaled call inside for being a writer. What he observed during these years was all he neither could accustom himself to nor think of or support morally and from all basics of moral intuition. So, he was metamorphosing himself within and was trying to get rid of all the inexplicable oppression and unspeakable truth about British practices, and the economic, social and political effects of colonialism. So, Orwell eventually in 1928, quit the police service and went back to England. Concurrently, he also discovered that England had its own oppressed. And, eventually, he turned out to be a writer. Drawn on his personal experience in Burma service days, he wrote his first novel, "Burmese Days" (1934) which "satirized the white man's club, where imperial traders, soldiers and civil servants ritually confirmed their superiority" (Jellinek, 1972). His famous essays-"A Hanging" (1931) and "Shooting an Elephant" (1936)-sum up his feelings about the humiliation" (Smith, 2019) that he developed during his days as an imperialist police officer in Burma. This penance of Orwell's soul in Burma collective with the obvious harbinger of sufferings and oppression, domination, inferiorities by the regimes and continuing frustrating experience of the lower-middle classes in England is extended into his writing. Hadden & Luce (1983) remark that "Shooting an Elephant (1936) portrays "the dirty work of Empire at close quarters." Precisely, "all of his [Orwell's] books are obviously based upon his own experiences" (Rodden & Rossi, 2012). More specifically, his "A Hanging" is , as (Tymieniecka, 2002) comments , " a personal experience essay" and it is based on the impulse of a psychological tension, and a moral contradiction, procedural decorum and unaffected attitudes of all present in the hanging spot -both natives and imperialists. The essay depicts that Orwell feels bothered throughout the event of hanging to see the "unspeakable wrongness" of capital punishment. This study attempts to find out how Orwell's choice of language guarantees and assists instrumentally to achieve as much apparent expression of his aversion to and disapproval of hanging /capital punishment as possible.

Orwell's anti-imperial focus:
Even though Orwell was a belonging part of the imperialists, his career days as an imperial officer and in capacity of his close connection and observation, found the dark discriminatory and extra-degrading attitude and treatment of the colonizers on colonized Burma, which is something that has got to do with Orwell's long-way anti-imperialist mindset and uncomfortable literary track traced in his writings sometimes masked, sometimes unmasked. This has safely brought him an all-time appellation i.e. "anti-imperialist" (Alam, 2006, Donmez, 2012. His posting in Burma as a police officer traumatized his inside during the time's samples of imperialists' workings, and also it compounded his dilemma between imperialists' ruling systems and the natives' eventual helplessness, discomfort, dislikes, despair all taking place unspoken and unprotested. This is what Orwell figured out that something got wrong which doesn't fit for humans after all. So, being mentally and spiritually paralyzed by the Britishers' high level of nonsense of horror, most worrying practice, torture and economic oppression and cultural aggression and so forth on the colonized races, Orwell grew a conscience-striken temptation and gut to go into about all this in his writings. Thus, his writings such as "shooting an Elephant", "A Hanging" , "Burmese Days" reflect how he uses his pen around talking about the imperialist wrongness and character and a genuine level of belief and urge for a change in the colonizing systems which natives didn't have that feat and master visionary hearts to stand against, as a matter of fact. It's true that there is no unanimous agreement about Orwell's being "pro-imperialism" and "anti-imperialism", it is rather a stronger point that 'in each of his Burmese stories the British are depicted as morally lacking and the racially mixed indigenous people are resolutely inferior beings: timid, puerile and comical, with a couple of villainous exceptions' (Melia, 2015).
Early 19 th century's Industrial Revolution, England first got from within a reformation boost and wave, and secondly it then, by their courage, ambition, and determination, started reaching out and making Africa and Asia their colonies with a marketing and economic mission. Over a couple of centuries, the British turned "global hegemon and adopted the role of global policeman" (SCHWEIZER, 2001). So, in real practice, "policing" in any known form means one kind power that forces others to obey them as an organization and their rules without questions. Sometimes, in places, "police" has been synonymous for threats and fear which, as a matter of fact, drives the conventionally and culturally weaker or harmless races, by default, to receive oppressions and immoral treatment beyond their all reluctance and intolerance. Such has uniquely been worth capitalism, communism and imperialism, colonialism and even postcolonialism. Practically, Orwell ended up being an imperial police officer posted in Burma. So, he had witnessed and eventually was mentally disturbed by the explicit and implicit evidence of pains and pangs caused towards the harmless natives by all the human badness of the imperialists. Such as an affecting impression could have just as much as troubled Orwell who might have been in heart a follower of the cosmopolitan golden rule that "one should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself" (Ferrara, 2013). So, to assume a voice for who have no voice and choice, to identify the flaws and fouls with the powerful, and to celebrate and to advocate equality and advantages and co-existence for the powerless in mind are Orwell's implicit or explicit power and philosophy that he carried in himself, by which he imagined the better through his writing. To sum up, Orwell after all was settled in mind with his active stance to point, in his writings, all the pointless wrongness (Walker,1991) that the imperialists had been going with in their times in Burma and everywhere, and troubling humans bound by their enormous threats, fear, and all bad experiences, which has too got a literary evidence in his exceptionally valuable genre work i.e. "A Hanging". He lets out " I saw the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide" (Gilroy, 2005).

Studies done and the gap this study deals with:
George Orwell is, with right evaluation and appreciation, recognized as "a writer with a timeless voice" (Orwell & Weis, 2015). And surely, out of all his writings either off those of political types, or in there of his social literary sites, and in fact any kind of his writing reflecting a voice befitting a universal appeal and applicability, it is definite that he makes it which is passing on through times. So, it would be something of a careless level if his writings are not unveiled and read with an all-time's thematic concern and relevence so as to catch up the writer's belief and voices on situations and systems of the society, state and rulers and many more than that which follow or associate in and around his writings.
Although it's like the story, "A Hanging" is less attended (for any reason whatever doesn't add up really) than it should need, no other piece is better than it to start out the makings of a "doing-understanding" about Orwell as the globally celebrated anti-imperialist.
In absolute appreciation of the essay, Rodden, however, (2014) goes to put forward an evaluation that his "A Hanging" is so influential and self-interacting a story that it helped Orwell in soul, spirit and conscience develop into a mature, true Orwell as he is essentially known today. So, the story / essay (there is a genre debate) serves as a breakthrough for Orwell's literary career with a discomfort and hate for the protected, powerful crafts of systems of imperialism i.e. all experienced and imposed ideologically, culturally and geographically "trouble making things" on the weaker, harmless natives, which called Orwell's pen to importantly make a medium for its expression and connection to the senses of all affected hearts. Therefore, the essay, as a literary campaign and documentary of an imperialist's "within-voice" for a change of hanging, shooting and other things going and happening on the ways, cannot be a long lost essay anyway; it deserves a renewed reading attention from anyone with epic zeal of curiosity for a complete Orwell study starting just from the early piece "A Hanging" to find out all the next things to come up in his following writings, no matter what.
The event of hanging of a native Burmese, which moved Orwell as a narrator and observer of it, and which planted a seed of question of hanging's validity deep into him, is curiously checked out more with ironical impressions in the essay "A Hanging", and it is understood as an irony of the event of agonizing crucifixion of Jesus Christ (Nababan, 2010). So, taking the event to this height, ironically though, implies that Orwell's passionate, authentic experience and witnessing of hanging is so involving in terms of a responding focus on the systematic killing of a human being. Right under this very attitude and feeling about hanging, the theme of its wrongness unspoken is rather spoken in a really appreciating way -whatever much at a superficial level but quite a lot more than that with his guided linguistic majesty and choices of language to make a fuller, deeper and graver meaning and realization of the system. The present study is actually convinced that Orwell is necessarily attended, appreciated, and admitted but his one of the questioning and thought-provoking essay / short story "A Hanging", which has made itself different in genre and straight, significant thematic issue i.e. hanging, is not as much sufficiently and well explored from a possibly scholarly outlook. The study considers that "A Hanging" by Orwell is like a turned-out-to-be-an-unconventional genre. Probably there is no such thing as confusing and leading to debate with the story's form and styles. More importantly than being a no-match genre built, the story is in purpose truly, wonderfully the words for the quiet, and superbly spoken for the unspoken. Ultimately clear through Orwell's language efforts and skills exploited in the story, the serious "theme of unspoken wrongness" is documented, which this study aims to make a scholarly exploration of and an access to the theme to attach a due literary value to Orwell's outstanding piece of writing, "A Hanging".

Theory of transitivity:
As a linguistic tool with so much effect on language analysis at clause level to understand how that can construct meaning across the choices of verbs as a meaning making grammatical category, Transitivity is a part of Halliday's famous Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) which he developed under Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). In his grammar theory, Halliday suggests that transitivity is the grammar of the clause as a structural unit for expressing a particular range of 'ideational meanings'. Traditionally, transitivity is in prescriptive grammar a verb that has at least one object, even often two (Rayhan, 2011). However, in his Introduction to Functional Grammar, MAK Halliday (1985) came up with a new concept of transitivity. For Halliday, transitivity still refers to a verb, however, regardless of an object. He describes verbs as 'processes'. Hence, Halliday's transitivity is referred to as 'transitivity processes'. This is, in fact, the meaning making process. In fact, Halliday after all considers language as a system for making meanings (Lemmens, 1998).
Halliday's transitivity can be found in his famous Systemic Functional Linguistics as shown below in this page. Haliday (1971) and other linguists like Martin (1992), in their immediate goal of stylistics analysis, aimed "to show why and what text means and how it does". This school of linguists established that the meaning of a text is produced through two types of contexts namely (a) context of culture, and (b) context of situation. Furthermore, Halliday (1985) postulated that the meaning is also determined by three metafuntions namely (i) ideational or experiential, (ii) interpersonal, and (iii)textual. "... Each metafunction is a 'systemic cluster ... it consists of 'clusters of semantic systems' which make meanings" (Nodoushan, 2014). As transitivity is a mechanism of transmission of ideas, so it finds its root in 'ideational' function of language (see the following figure). (Cunanan, 2011) Transitivity analysis in any text, as Halliday (1985) says, refers to analyzing language at the clause level. In the SFG framework, Halliday, (1981: 42) defines a clause as "the simultaneous realization of ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings." In general, a Hallidian English clause has three main parts: 'participant' (noun groups) + 'process' (verbs) + 'participant' (noun groups). Besides, there may be another element in a clause which Halliday calls 'circumstances' (adverbials, prepositional phrases). If so, the clause structure may also look like "participants + process + participant + circumstances". However, circumstances may occur at the start, or in the middle or at the end of a clause. An example from Orwell's 'A So, "verbs" in Hallidian typical clauses are called "processes". Processes are the most important element of a clause. Wu (2008) comments, only "through the analysis of verb processes in the texts, the way the text represents social actions can be better understood". In his 'An Introduction to Functional Grammar (IFL)', Halliday (1985) described six types of processes i.e. six types of verbs that language users make choices of to make different types of meanings for communicative purposes in different genre systems:

Material process:
It is a process of "physical doing or action". By these actions, the outside material world of language users makes meaning. The action is carried out by an 'actor' (participant in the subject place) and to an entity (participant in the object or complement place) which is called a 'goal'. The actor does the doing and the goal is affected by the action. Burke (2017) explains "there are different kinds of material process which account for the scope of 'materialness'". An example from 'A Hanging': "The prisoners [actor] can't get [material process] their breakfast [goal]." Burke presents a table of a choice based on various permutations of a clause in different material process structures wherein the process signifying action is every time the same: (Burke, 2017, p.51) From the table, Burke summarizes that in all examples the constant element is the Process, "the doing" i.e. "kicking". However, in (a) David is in the active role of doing while in (b) his active role of "doer" is undergrounded. Then, in (c) the prominence role of the goal is foregrounded with the doer omitted while in (d) the action is in supervention with the doer excised.

Mental process:
Mental process refers to the process of "mental actions" by five human senses i.e. 'seeing' (eye), 'hearing' (ear), 'smelling' (nose), 'tasting' (tongue), and 'feeling' (mind). By these actions, the language users bring their inside out; mental process depicts what is going on inside (in the mind) of a language user as a social being. The participant in the subject place plays the role of a 'senser' and the participant in the object place plays the role of a 'phenomenon'. An example from 'A Hanging':

I [senser] watched [mental processes] the bare back of the prisoner [phenomenon].
Halliday sub-divides mental process into three (Halliday, 1994cited in Burke, 2017: (i) Perception (seeing , hearing etc.), (ii) Affection sometimes known as Reaction (liking, fearing, loving, hating), and (iii) Cognition (thinking, knowing, understanding etc.) Burke shows the above three sub-types of Mental processes as in the following table: (Burke, 2017, p.53) Relational process: It is the process of describing, identifying, characterizing and possessing. More specifically, it is the Transitivity category of recognizing an entity's 'being' or 'having'. Bloor & Bloor (2013) explains that the typical relational process looks like " X is Y". The typical verbs in the relational process are copular ones i.e. be, look, seem, appear, sound, turn, and verbs of possession such as have, own, possess. Relational processes are further categorized into two: (i) Identifying Relational Process (IRP): IRP is employed to identify the world (every entity in the world). The participants in an IRP clause are "Identified" (noun or noun phrase in the subject place), and "identified" (the noun or noun phrase in the complement place) as in the following clause (from A Hanging: He [Identified] was [relational process] a Hindu [identifier]. In this clause, the person in xophoric reference (he) is identified as "a Hindu" meaning he is a man of a particular religious belief.

(ii) Attributing Relational Process (ARP):
An ARP clause colors the world (every entity of the world) with different attributes as positive, negative etc. The participants in an ARP clause are "carrier" (noun or noun phrase in the subject place), and "attribute" (adjective in the complement place) as in the following clause (from A Hanging): Each cell [par: NP: career] was [pro: relational: intensive] quite bare [par: attribute]. In this clause, each prison cell gets a description with an attribute i.e. "quite bare".

Behavioral process:
It refers to the process of 'behaving'. Actually, behavioral process overlaps material and mental process because the verbs refer to physical and mental actions through a behaver's behavior towards an entity get exposed. So, Fuller (2019) says, "behavioral processes exist between material and mental process". Halliday lists the behavioral process as the categories of actions such as " breathing" "smiling", "dreaming" "coughing" (ibid). The only one participant in the behavioral process plays the role of 'behaver' (noun or noun phrase in the subject place) as in the following example from 'A Hanging': Several

Existential process:
Existential process refers to a class of verbs that denote that something exists or is present in reality. Eggins (2004) puts, "Existential processes represent experience by positing that 'there was/is something'. Conventionally, an existential process clause employs a 'There + verb to be + participant' structure. Eggins clarifies that "there' doesn't have a representational meaning, and it doesn't refer to any pace as it does in other cases. Some previous transitivity analyses: Nguyen (2012) points out that transitivity analysis made a start with Halliday's (1971) noteworthy study on William Golding's 'The Inheritor'. This is a classic work on transitivity analysis. For Carter and Stockwell (2008), it is as one of the groundbreaking analysis in stylistics. Since then researchers have applied transitivity analysis time to time in exploring how language structures produce certain meanings and ideology in a literary text and also language use in other domains like newspapers. Transitivity was investigated by Hubbard (1999) on characterization in Salman Rushdie's 'The Moor's Last Sigh'. Hubbard through his analysis tries to put value on 'transitivity analyses' as a vehicle of explicating reader response to characters in fiction. In 2009 Yaghoobi carried out a systemic analysis. He investigated the same news actors in two newspapers named Newsweek and The Kayhan International. His analysis showed that the two media were ideologically opposed to each other and the same news actors were represented as opposed to each other. In 2011, Cunanan, a PhD researcher, attempted to analyze Virginia Woolf's 'Old Mrs. Grey' using transitivity as a framework in a stylistic analysis. It illustrates that by attending to author's linguistic choices readers can reproduce the elusive and subjective mind style of that author or persona. Song's (2013) transitivity analysis of 'A Rose for Emily' explains processes and their functions in the building of the theme and characters in the text. Mehmood et al. (2014) used transitivity as a tool to investigate that language forms perform a communicative function in Wilde's 'The Nightingale and the Rose. ' Ezzina (2015) came up with a piece of work of transitivity analysis on Thomas Pychon's 'The Crying of Lot 49'. The analysis upholds the fact that transitivity analysis can unveil the linguistic techniques employed by the post modern writers like Pychon.

FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS OF "A HANGING" :
The study split all the Transitivity processes after clause parsing and came up with a percentage of six types of transitivity and the experiential meanings made out by them through the text. How Orwell's choice of these processes altogether represents his antiimperialistic view and argument against the wrongness in the capital punishment system runs as below:

Material processes:
The majority "processes" of 'A Hanging' are material processes which is (+/-115) 189.08% of the total. It suggests that Orwell's portrayal of a hanging as a wrong deed is mainly based on the physical actions of the different actors in the transitivity framework. Besides, the dominance of material processes in the story signifies that the participants are basically doers and they are busy doing physical things. May be, this is because a hanging basically involves physical doers and doings; it involves many physical activities. Orwell makes choices of the dominant material processes to build an image of what's going on in the seen, physical execution spot in order to put end to a living-like-us human "physique". There goes an adage that "seeing is believing". Orwell sees an execution but he was moved by it and was feeling it hard to believe how it can work out killing a man by all the physical actions such as the cruelest one "hanging". As found in this study, internationally "hanging" is looked upon as "barbarous". So, the execution and the involved people carrying out the parts of duties represent the "worst" of some cruelest physical actions. Interestingly, the material processes as transitivity choices in the essay "A Hanging" can present the best summary of the whole story and is fairly able to represent the theme of worst "unspoken wrongness" of hanging as a system.
The "actors" of 60/ 61 material clauses are humans. As stated in the Transitivity theory, actors of a material process can be either conscious being or inanimate objects. Practically, in an execution spot basically several responsible humans involve and perform many physical actions, which accounts for why the predominant "actors" are "humans" whose actions are supposed to affect especially one human being, the hanged Hindu man. Of all the human actors, the prisoner (the hanged) is the actor in only 8 processes, and interestingly all of them are goal-less. It means that the prisoner was helpless and inactive in the hanging spot, and his actions were not able to affect the entities around him. This helplessness is the natives' accepted fate in the face of the imperialists' cruel systems and rules. Such a complete helplessness of the native Burmese Hindu man to the colonists' system of capital punishment looked as "unforgiving" for Orwell, not for the bulky, British, brutal force. To describe the public material action of hanging, Orwell employs this predominant number of material transitivity processes in the essay. The rest of the human actors include the (i) "imperialists" who kill the helpless native, (ii) "the narrator" who is more of curious and more involved in mental processes, (iii) the "fellow prisoners" and (iv) "warders" who are again" powerless" because they belong to the class of the hanged. These fellows have turned less sensitive over the period of British rule in their land, and they have been used to seeing the events of hanging as quite normal, unaffecting incidents.
Maximum material processes do not have goal participants. For example, "The superintendent] grinned". It implies that Orwell is more concerned about the actions and the doers in the process of hanging rather than the goals on which the reflection of the actions will fall. It may also suggest that Orwell wants to show that the actors are self engaged in the event of hanging which he presents as a wrong system to the path of "visionary humanism". Being an anti-hanging British police officer, Orwell observes closely hanging event and broods deep into the issue and feels unable to align himself with the system.
Only 25/26 processes are goal directed of which the actors are mainly the warders and prisoners. That is the prisoners in general are pushed by the imperialist authority and they questionably partake the execution activities of one of their own community without showing any practically functioning sympathy and reluctance because they have put on a habitual slavery's covering on their existence. Now, they don't even bother seeing country men's inhuman, cruel killing in the system of the colonialists. 12 goals are either the prisoner or the prisoner's body parts. This implies that both the imperialists and the helpless, hopeless native actors affect the entities especially the would-be hanged man. This also means that the natives turned the beck and call of the English authority that made them involve in almost all doings directed to hanging.
The narrator, Orwell, participates in only two goal-directed processes, which may account for his indifference or apathy toward the inhuman act of hanging. It suggests that Orwell puts a wall of reluctance towards capital punishment. As he was a novice officer around that time, he didn't actively partake the physical actions with enthusiasm in order to gather practical experiences of how to execute; he was instead in the speculating himself with his anti-hanging campaign while scanning every detail of the situation on the execution spot. He was settling strongly with the disapproving way he thinks of hanging. In fact, Orwell witnessed many events of hanging; "far too many people were hanged during Orwell's time in Burma…" Rai (1990). As earlier stated, Orwell's biographical connection to his writing resulted in his curiosity and it was redirected to the serious modern inquiry and justification of the validity of hanging as a system rather from his supposed professional part of engagement in accomplishment of the event of hanging. The underlying meaning potential of his anti-capital punishment gets obvious exposure in his language choice of transitivity for himself as being involved as an actor in the least number of material processes.
Being a belonging part of imperial power and practice, Orwell can't be so direct in one natural sense though, his anti-imperialist mind and attitude is still understood in the patterns of language choice he makes in the narration of the events, besides his biographical evidence of his "anti-imperialist" gut as stated in this study. The inhuman act of hanging is put in some passive voice constructions at syntactic level with an omission of the actors. "The job [of hanging] was done'' is one, for example. Basically, this kind of transitivity construction of Material process is what Burke calls "action-orientation". Therefore, Orwell emphasizes generic disapproval of the action of hanging as a system no matter what a big power it practices. However, the omitted "agency" of this action of this systematic killing is still understood. It's none other than the imperialists. So, this choice of transitivity processes is an opportune linguistic choice of his identifying hanging as a killing and the imperialists as the implied killers.
In the story, the imperialists represent all authority and power. This power is represented in transitivity framework by the author's choices of imperative and question structures like: Kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise, or question like: Who let that bloody brute in here? The interpersonal relationship between the prisoners and the imperialist authority was like the one between the "unchallenging powerful" and the "helplessly powerless". According to Halliday & Matthiessen (2013), an imperative mood structure is employed to function as having someone less powerful to get service. And, an interrogative sentence enacts to demand service or information. So, the natives like the hanged are not in the position of demanding service; they have been made into slave like "service givers" who eventually accepts death penalty as an unresisting fate, which causes an internal discomfort in Orwell's mind that only accepts freewill, equity and justice.
The choices of material processes and actors in the transitivity system again have been determinant in the story's point of view. The actors 'We' and 'I' construct the 1 st person point of view in the story. The narrator is a character in the story who narrates the story with his individual psychological consciousness on the topic of hanging taken place at the jail yard before his eyes. Therefore, we could say that the actors 'I' and 'We' construct the 1 st person point of view based on the Fowler's (1996Fowler's ( , 1986) "spatial-psychological model". The narrator himself is least engaged in the actions but is mostly telling and reporting the entire hanging incident. Again, he narrates mostly, as stated by Simpson (2004), in indirect "Narrative Reporting Speeches" (NRS). So, here, it is clear that to understand the story, the readers mainly access to what degree the narrator sees and tells, not the character's words. However, Orwell exploited some direct speeches as well which have brought a kind of liveness of the narration of the story. Linguistically, Orwell exploits "inclusive we" which expresses his stance about the hanging and the whole event as if Orwell is a part of what just happened. Nevertheless, he exclusively disassociates himself with the system of hanging by saying in the 1 st person singular "It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man", Orwell(1931).
The material processes are very representative of "inhuman action" and activities and also very instrumental in the transitivity system to interpret the theme of "wrongness" of the text. The imperialists were "hurrying" to kill the man. This hurriedness to finish a human life may be professionally right and appropriate, but "morally" inappropriate. Orwell thinks of this hurried arrangement of killing a healthy man is wrong while his life wants to live and linger. This ethical and logical position of Orwell goes matched with the modern attitude to capital punishment as in many countries it has been abolished from the same perspective and life sentence is advocated as the substitute which lets a big option for a life to live as long as it does with an infliction of long term punishment and eventual prospects of repentance and correction. Orwell's choices in transitivity in the story reflect that hurriedness. Material processes like 'waiting' for hanging, 'marching' quick for hanging, 'striking' of the clock for hanging, 'killing' quickly, 'getting' the hanging over quickly etc. herald that there was a mad rush for killing a man, which, Orwell overtly says, is very much inhuman and morally wrong.
Again, the processes of 'having' drink and every warder's 'receiving' breakfast after the hanging have been ascribed to human actors including the natives and the English. It creates an impression that the death of a man hardly matters to them. The incident implies that the weak, colonized natives' being routinely killed under the British imperialists' traditional cruel systems of capital punishment has created an "usuality" which no longer bothers the native fellow prisoners seeing some of their cohorts being executed before their eyes , even with the natives' assisting labor. The imperialists don't show they are affected, and they don't really feel affected by another human's killing in their hands because their cruelty is a demonstration and application of power, and thus they make it a working success of creating a "fearful milieu" which has probably replaced the natives' compassion. As a consequence, both the English jailors and the natives go and show unaffected by taking part soon in the daily further physical actions of "taking" breakfast and "having" drinks immediately after the event of the Hindu man's hanging as a usual event. This "welcomed fate" of the natives is epitomized in the typical exploiting, powerful and fearful characteristic of colonialism which has got surprisingly expressed in an imperialist writer like Orwell.
There are some material processes with non-human actors. Majority of them are attributed to the dog as the actor. The processes like 'barking' and 'leaping' of the dog, 'making' a dash for the prisoner, 'trying to lick' the prisoner's face, 'echoing' the yaps, 'galloping' near the gallows after the hanging, 'retreating' into a corner of the yard -all insinuate that the physical actions of the dog influence the whole of the hanging event and it was able to delay the hanging for some time by its several physical actions which may be inspired by the inner feelings that arose in it at the sight of a human's killing. The dog was apparently moved by the hanging while the man's fellows seemed absolutely unaffected by it. The dog's strong, tensed physical activities evidence an animal's disapproval and criticism of human's execution which Orwell observed very closely, and which he was curiously brooding over inside. The dog's restless physical move may again be interpreted as a natural animal protest against unbearable, uncomfortable imperialism while no human is left to protest it baldly.
As some meronymic actors (Simpson, 2004, p. 76), Orwell has attributed some material processes to the human parts of the man to be hanged like: "all the organs of his body (nails, stomach, skin, muscles etc.) were working". These non-human meronymic actors substitute a complete human being who is still in the role of a 'doer'. That is, the -going-to-be-hanged man is still as physically able as others, and Orwell's thoughtful reasoning is just in there -how far forcefully destroying an able bodied healthy human being is appropriate as a punishment? Instead, life sentence in prison would be more suitable punishment system.
The narrator individually involves only in one action: "I let go of the dog". This scarce availability of Orwell's involvement in the seen, material actions directed to hanging purpose connects to his ideologically motivated avoidance of efforted, active participation in the event of the capital punishment. Positively, his action advantageously affects the sympathetic, concerned dog-its freedom. Orwell's action of "freeing" the dog signifies that he was not against the freewill of a dog, even an animal. He was also, to more extent, an advocate of freedom of the oppressed whose freedom has been crushed into non-existence under the strong boot of cruelty and lacking humanity of the long staying imperialistic presence in the gripped, controlled, colonized lands as in Burma. However, inclusively, the narrator accompanied by other doers takes part in more 13 actions -were waiting, proceed , set out ,had gone ,put my handkerchief, walked, entered, stood waiting, hooded, went, walked, had a drink, and went. Of these processes, only 3 are goal directed (drink, handkerchief, the man) and the prisoner is the goal only once in one process. This means that the actions carried out by the actors with the writer's reluctant, observatory and partly involvement did not intently affect the prisoner, and didn't mean any caused harm to him. The narrator was just passively involved with the proceeding of hanging, avoiding any enthusiastic, effectual big actions, which may be otherwise translated as his ideological, thoughtful disapproval of capital punishment. He was more in observation to carefully decipher the central and associated wrongness in the system of capital punishment.
The actor 'one of us' and the process, 'would be gone', is a very significant transitivity choice which characterizes the narrator as a sympathetic man. "One of us" is an anaphoric reference to the prisoner decidedly to be hanged after moments. The plural referencing word "us" refers to humanity to which the narrators, the hanged, the whole colonized, the colonizersall belong to. Orwell's deliberate choice of such type of language intends his powerful humanistic sense of "solidarity, "equity feeling" and decisively looks upon the prisoner as "our man" despite his (Orwell's) being a distant representative of the powerful, authoritative British colonizers. This "we feeling" of Orwell is an appealing, cosmopolitan broadness of sublime, liberal integration of humanity where cruel, short sighted, ignoring practices like capital punishment sounds far-fetched and unconvincing.
Circumstantial adjuncts involved in the material process clauses like 'quite amicably', 'with a knowing smile', 'in a tolerant way' imbue the hanging event with a shared meaning that killing of a man consciously does not trouble the killers' normality, and they countenance the happening of the hanging as a cut and dried pattern of punishment.

Relational processes:
There are 23 relational processes in 'A Hanging' which is 37.49 % of the total. Eleven careers have involved in the processes. Of them, human careers involve in 10 relational process clauses, and non-human careers involve in 13 relational process clauses. The career used most frequently is 'it' and the second most frequent career is 'He' (the hanged man).
As explained in the theory of transitivity, relational processes pinpoint the attributes and identities of entities, the relational processes employed in the story illustrate the true features of persons, place, situation etc. prevailing during the execution event.
The attributes in the relational process clauses provide an image of the prisoner as is worth no consideration or value and his situation has turned very pathetic, and he is so much worried and nervous at the prospect of the loss of his life. In the transitivity framework, the choice of pronominal career (it) has played a vital role in referencing entities back and forward, which has, in Lamberchat's (1994) language, discourse referents. So, this non-human career is of good use to attribute a perfect image of non human entities; it invites the readers for a better understanding of the non-human entities exiting and identified in the story such as the environment of the prisoners' living place, the time of hanging, situation etc. mentioned and informed as the discourse referents.
Maximum relational processes exploited are 'verb to be' which well identifies and describes sad time, bad place, persons etc. The choice of the attributes is also of very mastery type because these attributes have a surface level of adjectival signification in addition to their suggested, deeper meaning of frustration, fact of deprivation and oppression and so forth. The morning was sodden, symbolizing an unfortunate or ominous morning for an ill-fated man whose life is up for the forced termination. The prison cell was bare, symbolizing prisoners' deprivation of the most basic human protection arrangement, which signifies Orwell's insight into the deplorable condition of the prisoners in the imperialists' jails. The prisoner was puny, symbolizing the natives' helplessness, and weakness of the colonized in the face of the giant imperialists' dominating power and authority. The prisoner was supposed to be hanged by that time, symbolizing the man's time was being counted. This is otherwise readiness for a group of men to take another man's life before his fellows who share the corresponding, incapacitated helplessness inflicted by the imperialists in Burma.
Other attributes are also purposeful choices for making combined meaning of specific wrongness in hanging or capital punishment. For example, the hanging was curious to Orwell. So, the choice of attributes in this pattern of transitivity portrays an inexplicable inquisitiveness and interest to comprehend any practical, sensible importance of capital punishment at all, and he was searching the meaning of killing a healthy man forcefully while he / she desires to continue to live . The life of the man to be hanged is in full tide; so, hanging, Orwell feels, is an erroneous method as it stops the life before its utmost extent. The cry of the prisoner was high and reiterated which symbolizes his tensed mental condition which he was solitarily going through. Another distinct example of attribute is found in the clause of "The dead body was a hundred yards away" whence all others were locked in joys and funs, and laughter. Keeping a dead body yards apart, the others, who just had witnessed the man's being hanged to death, characteristically resumed their regular engagement as normal and unaffected regular humans as if just nothing grave, shocking, poignant happened. Thus, the Hallidian relational transitivity pattern is skillfully employed by Orwell to highlight the theme of wrongness in the story reflected in time, place, persons and their aggregate of observable behavior during, after and before the experience of hanging of the Hindu man.

Mental processes
Mental process clauses are only 16 in number. It adds up to 26.08 %. However, they are very significant to present a sensory look into the inner sights of the sensers (characters). As explained that mental processes in the transitivity bring characters' inside out, the mental processes in the story serve as the emotional guide to the interior on-goings of the hanged man and the others involved in the execution. In the mental processes, the sensors are basically the hanged man and the narrator, Orwell -one is killed and the other is moved by the scenes of the killing. In the transitivity framework, the mental processes define that other characters' absence in the mental processes makes a reference that they are mentally indifferent or passive to the hanging and the hanged man.
The narrator, Orwell is the dominant participant in the mental processes, which implies that the narrator is in the stronger role of the effectual and active senser of the phenomenon i.e. hanging taken place in front of him. That is, almost only Orwell is mentally deciphering the frightening, catastrophic condition of the oppressed community manifest and documented in the systematic silencing by hanging and jailing and so on. This self-realization of Orwell as an imperialist officer suggests an "anti-imperialist" thought in one head within the whole British imperialists' road to India. While other executing imperialist representatives go uncaring and unaffected, only the narrator shows his internal engagement in perceiving the cruel and idiotic punishment system that kills the poor Hindu man. Thus, transitivity has played a vital role in perceptual representation of the narrator's mindset and purposeful writing agenda with his obvious negative perspective on hanging as a form of capital punishment.
The singular-plural pairs of the participants in the mental processes like the sensers of 'I' & 'We', and 'He' & 'We' provide the readers an impression that nobody is without feelings; we all have our feelings. However, different people may feel an identical thing in different ways. Not everyone's feelings run in the same direction with same category of perspective. One might feel laughing at what I may feel like crying to look. Similar thing happens in the story "A Hanging. 'One felt an impulse to sing' is, for example, just opposite to common, sensible, expected human behavior just in a place soon before, during, and after the hanging of a human being.
The Mental Processes are mainly seeing, looking, watching, glancing, hearing, feeling and understanding. The acts of all four human senses have been employed except the sense of eating because hanging is not a thing to eat. The use of four out of five human senses creates a deep mental picture of the characters with active senses to receive information about what's going on in the hanging spot. The sensers especially the narrator is aware of everything which is going on around them, but nobody is able to instigate an action necessarily to stop it, act adequately to think out any disobedience, reluctance to and disapproval of capital punishment. It is very skillful that Orwell has attributed the mental processes to himself (I), the prisoner (he), ourselves (we) to give an indication of what the characters feel, think or perceive "individually" and "collectively" as to the hanging of a man. It also depicts the good and bad people. Through the mental transitivity it gets manifest that nobody except the narrator is particularly affected and provoked to let out his reaction to the annoying system of capital punishment.
The processes i.e. seeing, looking, watching, glancing, are quite synonymous. Likewise, listening and hearing are also synonymous. It suggests one kind of repetition. This repetition brings a foregrounded mental effect to the text. Again, the repetition of the mental act of 'seeing' 10 times in its different synonyms indicates that the sensers mainly put an observatory flash of insight into the 'unspoken wrongness' of capital punishment. It's almost like only seeing and seeing a wrong, inhuman act happen and there is absolutely nobody to speak of it. It is, therefore, 'unspoken wrongness'. Surprisingly, this unspoken wrongness gets spoken in Orwell's essay, "A Hanging". URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.71.7708.
Verbal processes 11 verbal processes in the story constitute 17.93% of the total. There are some "verbiages" of which the "sayers" are omitted but they are still understood by the previous and subsequent turn taking. The sentence structures of these processes are of one of Lambercht's (1996) major three types, which is easily identifiable and productive as well. These structures can express, as Lambercht says, the speech act differences like interrogative versus imperative versus declarative. The natives have taken the role of sayers but their verbiages are mainly declarative sentences and replies of typical subordinates.
Verbal processes include said, bubbled, shout, exclaimed. The verbal process pair like 'bubbled -shouted' make a kind of binary opposition that signifies a binary opposite relationship between the oppressed (the Burmese) and the oppressors (the imperialists). The sayers and receivers have a boss-subordinate relationship which is realized by the verbiages consisting of a few addressing words of the natives i.e. "sir'' "yes sir" etc., and a few 'imperatives' of the imperialists i.e. "Hurry up", "Chalo'" etc. Again, the verbiage of the superintendent, which is an angry question 'Who let that bloody brute in here?'points to the power and authority of the imperialists expressed through their determining language. Furthermore, verbiages like 'For God's shake, 'hurry up', Chalo' etc. have a manifestation of the state and situation of the imperialist authority. They became fidgety to kill a man. Interestingly, the narrator does not take part in the conversation because he pays great concern to the hanging as a system. He does not say anything. He only perceives. Again, the processes like 'shouted' imply that the superintendent was kind of angry at the slothfulness of his subordinates. Even, the verbiage "you had better all come out and have a drink" reflects the sayer's (the superintendent) inhuman invitation or suggestion that does not fit just after the killing of a man.
The circumstances across the verbal processes also perform a valuable role to convey the inhuman sayings. 'Quite genially, fiercely, terribly, angrilyhave a reflection of the sayers' manner of speaking before and after the hanging. This harsh, burdensome and painful behavior associates with the imperialists' status and their commonplace patterns of attitude to the oppressed colonized, which Orwell's humanistic mind hinders within and arouses a debate whether this is in conformity with the 20 th century spirit of collectively benevolent, equal world.

Behavioral processes :
Although only 3 in number and only 4.89 % of the total, choices of behavioral processes in 'A Hanging' are very significant in semantic representation of 'wrongness' in the behavior towards killing and the killed man. In all three clauses, the same process 'laughing' has been repeated. This repetition is a strong reference to a foregrounded moral decay of the participants.
Tarrayo ((2014) says linguistics (stylistics) unlocks a literary text. More specifically, behavioral processes unlock participant's psychological behavioral representation, indeed. As the participants are conscious beings and as Orwell himself is involved in the process, he has kept the number of these processes limited so as to cover everybody's mental 'sickness' to some degree. This is morally wrong 'to burst out laughing' after taking one's life.
The participants or 'behavers' are arranged very technically and inclusively -'I', 'several people' and then 'everyone'. It moves from specific to general. This inclusive participation in the process of a wrong behavior of 'laughing' after killing a man carries a good value in the construction of the theme of 'unspoken wrongness' in 'A Hanging' from specific to generic level.
The mood adjunct i.e. 'quite loudly' (manner) signals to the readers that nobody is at all affected by this hanging. Another noteworthy thing is that the writer cites all the behavioral processes almost in the closing paragraphs of the story, which signifies that the hanging ended up with fun as if hanging a man equals a mere trifle. It is kind of relief for them as well.

Existential processes:
In the story 'A Hanging', Orwell describes mainly what happened, by whom, and how, not shows the existence of any entity. So, Orwell's choices of existential processes are too scanty. There is only one existential process in the story. It constitutes 1.63%. Halliday's (1985) Transitivity framework is a part of his systemic -functional grammar. It labels the language functions as the representation patterns of human experience as the ideational meaning. Ideational meaning, indeed, represents what is going on in the world. This research thus decided to carry out an interdisciplinary study of linguistics and literature to explore Orwell's perceived and experienced ideational meaning of the concern of the wrongness in the imperialists' injuring, uncompensating and oppressing systems imposed over the far lands' races, which all, with a continued historical and literary significance, is documented and depicted in his experientially written, superbly illustrating short story "A Hanging".

CONCLUSION:
In the transitivity choices, it is found that Orwell makes a long list of "physical actions" of the involved characters and assigned imperialist police members. These actions represent "execution arrangement" of physical activities to "destroy" a healthy physique which is in a helpless position. Orwell is the narrator of the story. He partakes the execution of the Burmese Hindu man, but he only stands apart and closely observes the hanging. He escapes from the required physical activities and labor because he had a reluctance and apathy towards hanging as a form of capital punishment because his morally influential belief and stance rejected and disapproved punishing human capitally. Outside Orwell is an imperialist police, but at heart he has a qualm about whether or not he is one of the imperialists. His less physical inaction has facilitated his stronger, deeper observation of the execution.
Orwell's realization came to be that it is really so easy to inflict torture on the weaker-man, woman, known, unknown. The Hindu man to be hanged after a while is one of the powerless, colonized man with no prospects of back fight with the British imperialists. He incisively understands very well none of his efforts will bear any effects enough to save himself from the colonizers' cruelty, embarrassment, and abuse. Therefore, he is a bound receiver of the loss of his own life. In the material transitivity system, the to-be hanged man is fully or meronymically the goals of 12 out of 25 goal oriented material clauses, which suggests he is the most affected person in the narrative by the actions of the fellows and the imperialists.
It's really painful to see and set brothers to kill brothers. Nevertheless, this unbecoming, gruesome, and cruel sight and philosophy of the occupying British power in the far land of Burma, India and elsewhere was nakedly exposed. In the narration of the event of the hanging, it's the hanged man's "fellow prisoners" and "warders", whose identical birth land, culture, religion, race made and shaped their "community sense", are engaged to make a habit of executing hanging their fellows. Thus, they unknowingly over time turned into "habitual slaves" of the imperialists, and they work perfectly on the injected inhuman spirit into them by those giant invaders. There is an underlying meaning potential of Orwell's dislike and disapproval of imperialistic oppression and their rules and ruling systems which are on the whole account a mismatch not only in the different land, but it is more importantly anti-human, anti-equity game of power over the powerless whom the deprivation of education, economy, knowledge, science have put them in way backward in human civilizations' development race. Actually, Orwell's strong "anti-imperialist" thought and realization is caught obvious in the choice of his material transitivity which he takes part in the very limited number i.e. only two.
A kind of "generic disapproval" of capital punishment comes up through the language use. The choice of passive construction of some transitivity clauses which are basically "actionoriented" and which omit the agency of the actions emphasize the wrong action of hanging humans to death irrespective of the actors/ agency of the actions. This also suggests that irrespective of the fact Orwell belongs to or doesn't belong to the imperialists, he just as a human being stands alone against hanging, the cruel human killing in other humans' hands.
A high-low distinction, an oppressor-oppressed role, a ruler-ruled character, a master-slave relationship, which is a frustrating picture of anti-equity relationship potential amongst humanity, also comes in light through the linguistic choices made across the story. The choice of imperative mood structures such as "kill him quickly', "get it over", "stop that abominable noise" and interrogative mood alongside such as "who let that bloody brute in here?" makes it obvious that the imperialists and the natives are different. These differences are let out in language, in behavior, in messages and actions. The imperialists' language goes around making a meaning that they are in the position of "demanding and deciding" and the colonized retched are just in opposite position of the "service givers, and order obeying". This puts the divided sections of humans of same blood as in two distinct identities of "they" and "we".
Orwell's anti-imperialist personality and mindset is manifest in the choice of singular-plural number of 1 st person referencing words such as "we" and "I" realized as the actors in the transitivity clauses. When he is one in the inclusive "we", he is honest in identifying his real outward belongingness to the imperialists, but elsewhere when he uses "I", it singles out himself inward as none of the imperialists. So, the transitivity framework thus brings up Orwell as an "odd out". Therefore, it is only Orwell's own thought and question-what is the point destroying a healthy human being by hanging? , which doesn't arise in the other imperialists he teams up with professionally. Precisely, what is right in other imperialists' eyes is wrong in Orwell's. All the people once believed that the sun moves round the sun was proved wrong. Only Galileo believed the opposite-the earth moves round the sun and he was proved right. So, Orwell's pinpointing wrongness in imperialism is a kind of "Galileolic discovery". And, once a sophisticated soul finds the truth, he/ she can't stay any longer with falsehood or something wrong and flawed. Practically, Orwell was not confortable with such a wrong, oppressive human ruling of his own nation, so he left his policing job eventually, and went back to England from Burma, which represents Orwell's "No" to imperialism.
Material processes, which are physical actions, are very representative of "inhuman actions" especially hanging. Something "inhuman" is something unacceptable. The material process of "hurrying" signifies that the executioners were all trying to "get rid of a human life". They were on a mad rush to finish the less valuable life of the Hindu prisoner. The race of humans that rushes toward the killing of another human lags behind by thousand steps in terms of humanity. Orwell does not belong to those with backwardness in humanity. So, Orwell's evaluation of hanging as an inhuman action and the manner of the responsible imperialist officials as unacceptable is a "cosmopolitan forwardness" with the modern disapproving attitude towards hanging as an inhuman capital punishment.
Wrong manner of the people-both the imperialists and the native prisoners-got obvious also in their immediate resumption of material actions such as "eating" and "drinking". Man dies, which is natural. But, killing a man systematically is anti-nature and anti-human. After doing this anti-human, cruel job of killing a man, if the killers don't feel an impulse of tears from eyes, and a guilty burden in hearts, it suggests a "drought of feelings" in kind human hearts. The drought on earth can be healed by rain from the huge, generous sky. Similarly, the draught in human hearts can be removed by big, generous, thoughtful minds and hearts that can make the half dead alive through the relentless strokes of advice, argument, questions, criticism of the derailed, turned-inhuman hearts and their activities and systems. In this connection, Orwell as a writer is an amazing "change maker" who gave out a clear message of his anti-imperialist and anti-capital punishment stance by breaking away with its work force in Burma. The processes namely "having drink" and "receiving breakfast" just moments after the hanging connote that the imperialists created a "fearful milieu" wherein hanging and any other forms of cruelty became "usuality", and the oppressed colonized Burmese became the "helpless fate receivers". The mood adjuncts in the material clauses such as "quite amicably", "with a knowing smile", "in a tolerant way" also solidify the meaning of "unaffected normality" of the executioners and the "cut and dried" pattern of capital punishment. The poor Hindu's hanging is an apparent "physical death" of an individual, but his warders and the imperialists are also "dead at hearts", at which the dog even is shocked and surprised. The dog's material actions like "leaping", "barking", "echoing " the yaps, "licking" the prisoner's face etc. were able to delay the hanging event. This little animal couldn't stop hanging finally though; its behavior implies that an animal is moved by the prospect of a cruel killing of a man while the fellow humans go unaffected. It suggests that imperialistic cruelty started out lowering humans way down than animals.
Orwell finds happiness in "freedom". In a material clause, he is the actor of the action of "freeing" the dog. By this action he suggests "the freedom of all" those whom the imperialists consider no superior to an animal. Thus, through the choices of actors in the material clauses such as "one of us" reflects Orwell's "we feeling" meaning an appealing, cosmopolitan broadness of sublime, liberal integration of humanity -inclusive of the narrator, the hanged, the whole colonized, the colonizers -where cruel, short sighted, ignoring practices like capital punishment sounds far-fetched and unconvincing.
The descriptions through the relational processes come up overtly to depict the "wrong attributes and identities" of both human and non-human carriers across the clauses. The morning of the event was "sodden" and the prisoner was "puny". The sodden morning is not only sodden for the hanged man, but it also signifies the "time of misfortune" of the Burmese imposed by the British colonizing race. The attribute i.e. "puny" symbolizes in deeper sense the "powerlessness" of the natives. Orwell identifies imperialism as the token of "misfortune" for the "powerless" races in the captured far lands where, prisoning, hanging etc. were a "traditional inhuman tool" to terrify and subdue the harmless people who can in no capacity fight back the giant, British imperial power.
Mental processes summarize that only two persons as the sensers are involved mentally in the event of hanging-the narrator, Orwell and the hanged man. One is imperialist officer and the other is a colonized man to be hanged. The hanged man burns, and the narrator gets hurt at the burnt. Orwell as the witness and narrator of the event is the predominant "senser" of the mental processes, which suggests that he is heavily engaged in deciphering how cheap the life of the colonized to the powerful is. Colonialism literally cannot offer a good life to the colonized but they take their lives so neglectfully and carelessly. So, Orwell was double checking very sincerely to keep himself aloof from this big "mismatched human system of oppression". He calls it "unspoken wrongness" because his companions and also the other prisoners were only "seeing" and "seeing" (10 times in the mental clauses) without speaking up to disapprove it. The wrong doers and those who put up with are equally condemnable. Thus, "A Hanging" serves as the document of Orwell's intolerance to and disapproval of all kinds of wrongness in colonialism and capital punishment, which makes him a "bird of humanity" with different feather that did not choose to flock together with the wrong doers of the British imperialists.
"Freedom of speech" of the colonized is killed alongside other oppressions. Man gets voice to speak from God. To stop this voice to speak up and to not allow them to have their say is morally and religiously wrong. The verbal processes such as (the hanged) "bubbled" and (the officer) "shouted" signify that the imperialists suppressed the voice of the colonized people. The hanged man wants to express his points and pain but he cannot pull them out of his mouth and it remains unheard while all spoken is the sole right of the occupying Britishers. So, the event of hanging additionally makes clear of the "death" of the freedom of speech with the death of a human body. This large scale wrongness makes Orwell an impossible supporter of imperialists' occupation and oppressions.
Behavioural processes point to "generic moral decay" of humans. The process of "laughing" repeatedly after hanging a man manifests a serious immoral behavioral issue and a pointed "sickness" of human mind and manner. The choice of referencing words such as "I", "people" and "everyone" signals that none is safe from this hollowness of sympathy in minds. This behavioral issue also suggests that everyone took part in the killing of a man, they executed him and it affected none of them, which represents "inhuman behavior" of the imperialists which has also been injected into the hanged man's fellows. Orwell thus identifies "colonialism" as a negative "metamorphosing" power that change kind hearts into hollow, insensitive ones, which he documents in the story "A Hanging" of which he is the witness, narrator, and writer.
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