Paragraphs 1, 2, and 3 contain vivid descriptions of the people and things surrounding the author on the morning of the execution. What details does he use that appeal to readers’ senses of sight, hearing, and touch? What is the effect of all these details?
We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row ofsheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages.
He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films.
They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while
feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water.
Eight o'clock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air, floated from the distant barracks.
He was an army doctor, with a grey toothbrush moustache and a gruff voice. ‘
A Hanging
