Capital Punishment by Sherman Alexie
"Capital Punishment" by Sherman Alexie is a poignant poem that explores the complex themes surrounding the death penalty through the perspective of a sympathetic cook. Comprising fifty-eight stanzas, the poem highlights the cook's emotional struggle as he prepares a final meal for an unnamed prisoner on death row. The cook, who remains unnamed himself, grapples with the ethical implications of capital punishment, particularly regarding the disproportionate representation of minorities among those sentenced to death. His role as both a preparer of food and a witness to this grim ritual invites readers to reflect on the humanity of the condemned individual. Throughout the poem, the cook expresses a sense of isolation and sorrow, particularly when he turns off the kitchen lights in a futile attempt to distance himself from the reality of the execution. Alexie's work critiques the notion of justice served through state-sanctioned death, underscoring the idea that each execution results not only in the loss of one life but perpetuates a cycle of violence and despair. The poem serves as a powerful commentary on the moral dilemmas posed by capital punishment, encouraging readers to consider its broader societal implications.
Capital Punishment by Sherman Alexie
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1996 (collected in The Summer of Black Widows, 1996)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
“Capital Punishment” consists of fifty-eight mostly two-line stanzas, punctuated six times with the same parenthetical, single-line comment by the cook: “(I am not a witness).” The cook thus periodically refuses the status of witness yet is clearly a sympathetic observer. As the cook prepares a simple dinner of a baked potato, salad, and glass of water, he wants desperately to make the last meal memorable and appetizing to the unnamed Indian on death row. The ethnic identity of the cook is unknown, but he is sympathetic to the inordinate percentage of minorities on death row. Such political commentary and inference from crime statistics imply a critique of capital punishment, the title of the poem, which becomes clearer as the poem continues.
The cook admits to tasting the food of the condemned prisoner before serving it, as a means to humanize and essentially to share the last meal of this condemned human. As the cook proceeds to imagine the “wispy flames decorating” the prisoner in the process of electrocution, the justification of a society that legally kills people is called into question. The cook glumly admits: “I turn off the kitchen lights/ and sit alone in the dark/ because the whole damn prison dims/ when the chair is switched on.” By turning off the lights and not noticing the power surge during the moments of electrocution, he is able only temporarily to forget the lethal justice that is being meted out elsewhere in the building.
Finally, without considering at all the crime or the circumstances of the crime, the cook reduces his quandary to simple mathematics: “1 death + 1 death = 2 deaths,” and seems to say that state-sanctioned death, whatever seeming justice may be sought, ultimately results in a second death, a second ending of life, a new and more horrible set of disappointments and endings without continuation.
Bibliography
Brill, Susan Berry. Contemporary American Indian Literatures and the Oral Tradition. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999.
Caldwell, E. K. Dreaming the Dawn: Conversations with Native Artists and Activists. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Fast, Robin Riley. The Heart as a Drum: Continuance and Resistance in American Indian Poetry. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
Grassian, Daniel. Understanding Sherman Alexie. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005.
Kilpatrick, Jacquelyn. Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Lincoln, Kenneth. Sing with the Heart of a Bear: Fusions of Native and American Poetry, 1890-1999. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Vickers, Scott B. Native American Identities: From Stereotype to Archetype in Art and Literature. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.