How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Who killed this man?
Nobody.
Everybody can argue that he or she was just doing a job… (5.31-33)
Nobody wants to be associated with death or responsible for death. The system is set up so that everybody can pass the buck: "I was just following orders," or "I just gave orders." If something is so yucky that nobody wants to hold it, Prejean is saying, maybe you all ought to put it down.
Quote #5
…my guess is that the faces of these condemned men will appear and fade and appear again before Marsellus for the rest of his life.
"I did these things," he says. "I sat in judgment on these men like that—the guilty and the innocent. But who was I to sit in judgment? It still bothers me. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry." (8.132)
Marsellus is the head of the Pardon Board, and he has been convicted of taking bribes. Obviously, he shouldn't have been sitting in judgment: he was corrupt and awful. But he seems to be saying more—that nobody should sit in judgment, not even people who are not corrupt or not awful. Being corrupt and awful is bad, but even better people don't have the right to decide on life and death for others. Do you think anyone in the world is qualified to decide whether you should live or die? That's what Prejean wants you think about.
Quote #6
Robert will not be torn between life and death, wondering if the ring of the telephone in the death house brings news of a stay of execution. There is only death for Robert now, and waiting for death. (9.4)
Robert has no hope, so maybe—Prejean seems to say—he's better off. As Emily Dickinson wrote, "Hope is the thing with feathers, and feathers really suck when you're about to be executed." Well, that's what she would have written if she were on Death Row, anyway.