Reflections: Pages 1-7

In “Reflections on the Guillotine” by Albert Camus, Camus sets up the story of a farm worker awaiting the death penalty, more specifically awaiting the guillotine. This reflection takes place in 1914 in Algiers, a department of France. This criminal had “slaughtered a family of farmers, including the children” and had robbed them in a “bloodthirsty frenzy” (1). Camus paints the picture of this farm worker’s horrible crimes against humanity, going so far as to call the criminal “a monster” (1). Camus points out that the public consensus was that “decapitation was too mild a punishment” (1). 

In the story, Camus’ father wants to witness the criminal’s execution, so he joins a small crowd around the guillotine’s platform in the prison yard. When he returns home, his “face [is] distorted,” he “refuse[s] to talk,” and he “vomit[s]” (2). Camus’ father expresses how he could only think of the killer’s “quivering body that had just been dropped onto a board to have its head cut off,” diverting the attention from the horrible act against a family to a horrible act against a man. Camus’ father realizes that something is wrong in society if murdering a murderer is considered just, which sets up Camus’ argument. Specifically, Camus’ statement regarding his belief in the abolition of capital punishment is profound. He states that “it is obviously no less repulsive than the crime, and this new murder, far from making amends for the harm done to the social body, adds a new blot to the first one” (2). Rather than increasing justice, capital punishment actually increases injustice. In other words, Camus believes that two wrongs cannot make a right. Camus adds this story to create a shock factor for his audience. He wants them to stop avoiding the horrors of capital punishment and to acknowledge what it truly means to accept and advocate for the death penalty in society. 

Camus explains how journalists and officials use euphemisms to reduce the discomfort of talking about capital punishment. For example, language such as “paying his debt to society,” “atoned,” and “justice was done” hides the true identity of capital punishment (2). By removing “the flowers of rhetoric” (10), “justice was done” turns into ‘murder was done’ and ‘decapitation was done’ (2). Specifically, capital punishment is an illness that spreads and infects people. In this way, capital punishment is a cancer that sickens society from its true potential, responding to injustice and crime with injustice and crime. This is not justice. This is murder. 

Thus, Camus declares that “there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak” (3). This verbal cloak demonstrates pure “thoughtlessness” and “ignorance” in society by going along with such a detrimental act without understanding its consequences. Camus believes that if the public is forced to see the guillotine and “hear the sound of a head falling,” the death penalty would be banned for utter cruelty (3). Thus, it is vital for society to truly understand what capital punishment entails and then (and only then) determine if the harm done is necessary and justified (4).

Camus changes his persuasive tactics by demonstrating the extremes of using capital punishment as an intimidation tactic against potential criminals. For instance, Camus identifies a fundamental flaw in how French society tries to intimidate potential criminals. Specifically, society (at this time) did not hold public executions, meaning that the horrors associated with decapitation were hidden from the public eye (5). Camus insists that it would be better to exhibit the decapitated heads on a public display to actually intimidate and discourage people from committing crimes (5). To go a step further, Camus explains how the entire population should be invited to watch these decapitations take place. For those who cannot make it, “the ceremony should be put on television” and heavily advertised (6). Thus, Camus emphasizes the idea that “for the penalty to be truly exemplary it must be frightening” (6). How can something be frightening if no one knows what really happens behind the closed prison yard doors? With this being said, Camus highlights the importance of telling the public the step-by-step process of decapitation, rather than saying “if you kill, you will atone for it on the scaffold” (7). For instance, public officials would do a better job at intimidating potential criminals by telling them that their hands would be tied behind their backs, their feet would drag on the floor, they would be thrown onto a wooden board, and a “hundred-and-twenty-pound blade [would fall seven feet and] slice off [their] heads like a razor” (7). Now that sounds scary.

Camus brings an insightful collection of arguments in the first few pages of his essay. I will explore more of “Reflections on the Guillotine” in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned for more!

In the meantime, please enjoy this animation of a carrot being decapitated by a guillotine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NdjtiqR-sw

–Courtney Bain