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    The Executioner's Song

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    dluongo2025

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    The Executioner's Song

    Uploaded by

    dluongo2025
    69 views9 pages

    Original Title

    The Executioner’s Song

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    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    69 views9 pages

    The Executioner's Song

    Uploaded by

    dluongo2025

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 9

    The Executioner’s Song

    Dylan Luongo
    1132 Pages
    Written by Norman Mailer
    “Just Do It”
    Max David Jensen, Bennie Jewkes Bushnell
    Noted Atypicalities
    - Gary Gilmore was sentenced to death in the court of Utah for two counts of
    first degree murder, with the jury unanimously deciding his fate. 18 of
    Gary’s 36 years prior to his final conviction had been spent behind bars.
    Before Gary, in spite of sentences for it still being handed out, an execution
    had not been performed in the United States in over 10 years, due to the
    Supreme Court deciding in 1963 that the death penalty was “cruel and
    unusual punishment”, before overturning the decision a decade later.

    - Gary constantly begged for, contrary to public predisposition, his sentence


    to be carried out. This immediately made global headlines. Gary wanted
    death, and those who sentenced him that fate refused it.
    Excerpt of a Letter from Gary Gilmore to his Girlfriend
    I might be further from God than I am from the devil. Which is not a good thing. It seems that I know evil
    more intimately than I know goodness and that’s not a good thing either. I want to get even, to be made
    even, whole, my debts paid (whatever it may take!) to have no blemish, no reason to feel guilt or fear. I hope
    this ain’t corny, but I’d like to stand in the sight of God. To know that I’m just and right and clean. When
    you’re this way you know it. And when you’re not, you know that too. It’s all inside of us, each of us—but I
    guess I ran from it and when I did try to approach it, I went about it wrong, became discouraged, bored,
    lazy, and finally unacceptable. But what do I do now? I don’t know. Hang myself?
    I’ve thought about that for years, I may do that. Hope that the state executes me? That’s more acceptable
    and easier than suicide. But they haven’t executed anybody here since 1963 (just about the last year for
    legal executions anywhere). What do I do, rot in prison? growing old and bitter and eventually work this
    around in my mind to where it reads that I’m the one who’s getting fucked around, that I’m just an innocent
    victim of society’s bullshit? What do I do? Spend a life in prison searching for the God I’ve wanted to know
    for such a long time? Resume my painting? Write poetry? Play handball? Eat my heart out for the
    wondrous love you gave me that I threw away Monday nite because I was so spoiled and couldn’t
    immediately have a white pickup truck I wanted? What do I do? We always have a choice, don’t we?
    “The man had been so long on Death Row that he changed in character, and the question
    became, “Who was being executed?” Metamorphosis the play had been called, and
    Susskind always felt that it had had some effect on the end of capital punishment in New
    York State, and maybe even a little to do with the Supreme Court decision that saved a lot
    of men’s lives on Death Row. “Of course,” Stanley said now to David, “inviolate and forever
    simply means till the next generation. Then you have to do it all over again.”
    - The Disciple Peter is recorded to have “struck down” Ananias and
    Saphhira, owners of a plot of farmable land who attempted to scam
    him. Later variations, specifically changes after the King James Bible,
    claim it was the Holy Spirit which did so. Peter had violent tendencies,
    and the story of him cutting off the ear of a gentile who harassed him
    still remains in the Bible.

    - Saint Paul, before his conversion, made a living off of persecuting and


    subsequently executing Christians “beyond measure”. Specifically, he
    targeted the “Hellenists”, whom he identified simply by arresting every
    Greek speaking Jew, likely leading to their deaths, guilty or not. At the
    time of his writings, he had thousands of people put to death under his
    word.
    Does everything deserve redemption? Is even it our
    place to decide?

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