Sentenced to death
Subtitle: the American novel and capital punishment
By: David Guest.
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Jackson
Language: eng
Number of pages: 179
Subjects: Dreiser, Theodore, 1871-1945.; Wright, Richard, 1908-1960.; Capote, Truman, 1924-; Norris, Frank, 1870-1902.; Mailer, Norman.; American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.; Legal stories, American -- History and criticism.; Law and literature -- History -- 20th century.; Executions and executioners in literature.; Capital punishment in literature.; Trials (Murder) in literature.
Description: The criminal justice system in America is as powerful a shaper of history and society as its better-known counterparts - the military, politics, government, and technology. In a country that lacks a mandatory death sentence for specific crimes, the American strategy for execution proves to be based more upon distinctions between offenders than upon distinctions between offenses.

Five important novels - McTeague, An American Tragedy, Native Son, In Cold Blood and the Executioner's Song - bring readers a vivid awareness of America's punitive codes. Fach details the story of a life that leads to the gallows.

Sentenced to Death places these works against the historical background of crime and capital punishment in America, a nation where public discourse on crime is dominated by images of the electric-chair and the gas chamber, by maximum security prisons, by hardened convicts out on parole. Such images, in turn, mirror and shape the exercise of punitive power.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [171]-176) and index.