How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Prison is torture for him. He hates waiting while guards do the "count." He tells me how every inmate at every minute of the day has to be accounted for. (2.69)
Eddie really hates prison—and you can see why. Being under constant surveillance is painful and robs you of your dignity. It's not the death penalty, but it's miserable. Of course, Eddie committed a terrible crime, so perhaps he should be miserable—but isn't that the kind of logic of revenge that the book tries to reject? Do you think Eddie would be miserable, anyway? Would his conscience finally catch up with him?
Quote #2
"He is no longer a man but a thing waiting to be handled by the executioners..." (2.82)
This is a quote from philosopher Albert Camus. He's arguing that the death penalty turns a person into a thing or an object. Taking away freedom to live is the same as taking away a person's humanity; if you're not alive, you're just a brick or a clod. Freedom is part of the definition of being human—which again raises the question of whether prison might not be robbing people of humanity, too.
Quote #3
Their minds, what happens to their minds, I wonder, all day long, all night long, just watching other people. (4.17)
One of the problems with prison, which Prejean points out, is that it's not just prisoners who are inside it. Guards are in there, too. They haven't done anything wrong, but there they are, trapped, not even, as Prejean points out, able to use the phone. Jailing people means jailing yourself. On top of that, Prejean suggests that robbing others of their humanity means robbing yourself of your own humanity. What does it mean for a society to condone this?