Abstract:
With his short story “On the Gallows” Ilia Chavchavadze brought
the issues of the relationship of an individual with the society, crime,
and punishment into the Georgian intellectual and literary space
and made a stand against capital punishment.
The primary driver of Ilia Chavchavadze’s creative work is the
will to deliver the ideals to the readers with clarity and without obstructions.
In a large segment of his prosaic work the idea is expressed
through fictional material. The material is chosen to exhibit
the idea with maximal precision and to leave a strong impression.
This same method is used in the short story – “On the Gallows.”
The compositional center of the story is the character of old Petre.
He is a man formed and brought up by people, his nature, mentality,
and his attitude towards his environment express people’s world
views. His humanity, morality, and kindness are products of the environment
that shaped him. With his charming childlike simplicity,
naïveté, internal purity, and honesty, Petre comes close to the human
ideal. His primary trait is his love towards other people which
determines his unconditional kindness, warmth, and forgiveness. In
the story all the important ideas and thoughts are expressed in relation
to this character:
Social degradation, indifference, and irresponsibility turned to
cruelty are shown in the short story through old Petre’s confusion
about people’s attitude towards the act of capital punishment.
The protest against capital punishment and its cruelty, along
with its incompatibility with the human ideal is shown through the
fact, that even though Petre observes all of this with his own eyes, he
cannot believe that they hung a living human “like a cat.” The letter written to Petre provides an analysis of the problem of
crime and fair punishment. Life before the crime is retold in the letter
from the point of view of a person who experienced the miserable
situation of life taking away their choice and pushing them to crime
firsthand. This enables the readers to not only judge the brothers,
but to gain perspective and see the events through their eyes. This
way the reader can balance the purely rational and cold judgement
of the crime with a humanitarian position based in morality. Only
such humanitarian attitude can produce fair judgement. Otherwise,
punishment turns into revenge, and the moral barrier that separates
the judge from the criminal disappears. Such approach is one of the
primary requirements towards a healthier society.
