Death and Actors...Tropmann

This essay was a bit different than anything that I have read before. It immediately reminded me of a behind-the-scenes type view of execution. Almost as if it were a play. Just the way that the people were showing up ahead of time and talking with the executioner as he was "rehearsing" and the small group waiting to meet Tropmann. It all seemed as though it was staged. Tropmann himself seem like an actor, he was too happy. The narrator even points that out.

I was also reminded of the book The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy; really it's just the beginning of the book that reminded me of this. In the book, there are executions happening in which people are gathered around as if it's a grand event. There are even women described, come to find out one is the hero dressed as a woman looking for information, that are sitting near the guillotine platform sewing and gossiping as if nothing unusual was happening. Granted Tropmann's death and The Scarlet Pimpernel weren't written or around the exact same time, 1870 and 1903 (set in 1792) respectively; but they do show similar themes. People like a show, they like to be entertained by a gruesome event. It's a sad thing to say but it seems to be true, for the most part.

Take when Saddam Hussein was finally captured and put to death; there were many that wanted to see his body die. That could partly be because of what he did and they wanted revenge but he was hung, there were most likely a large number of people that watched him die just because he was to die. There seems to be a correlation between death and the desire to watch life leave the body. I'm not saying that it's a psychopathic tendency and that everyone is going to go kill someone, but it may be a bit deeper than that. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that everyone dies and those that are living are curious about death and what comes after it. For death is truly a curious thing. People die, we know that but what happens when we die, what are the last stages of people's life, what do they do. These are aspects that are addressed by Turgenev.