Juan Quintana Word Count: 706
Eng. 108-05
November 20, 2008
Capital Punishment
If one of my relatives were killed by some cold-hearted individual, would I feel the rage and the vengeance to get “equal” with the murderer? Knowing myself, yes, I would feel more than raged. In my opinion, it would depend if you’re religious or an atheist. It would depend if you can relate to what the relatives of the young victims experienced and felt. It would depend if you were in the Sister Helen’s shoes. But I could not agree more with Gelernter’s position on capital punishment. However, I can understand Sister Helen’s sympathizing ways of forgiving. Yet, I feel confused about my stance on this issue. Whether Capital Punishment is the reasonable and impartial thing to do, I still would not be able to choose a definite side on this issue.
It is incongruous when Sister Helen mentions in her essay how Elmo (Patrick) and his brother (Eddie) are human beings after they decided to take such inhumane actions towards other human beings. At the time when I read this, I smiled and nodded. This was unexpected from a nun who failed to see both sides of the story. Additionally, she refused to meet with the victims’ relatives because, supposedly, she could not bare or handle the raw pain. So how can you think you are fair and right when you paid too much attention and sorrow towards the criminal and had no room to understand and even feel compassionate for the victims’ family?
I think if any individual were to realize who is to deserve the worthy attention, that individual is to know both facts of the story. But why was Sister Helen superfluously compassionate towards the inhumane criminal? Was she ignorant and stubborn? Did she purposely want to fully acknowledge Patrick as the victim the way she did in her essay?
These were the types of questions that wave-in in my head during...