Dead Man Walking Themes

As an issue, the death penalty is central to Christianity—after all, Jesus Christ was unjustly executed by the state. In fact, the cross, as a symbol of the crucifixion, is also a symbol of the d...

Family. Squee, right? Yeah, well, in Dead Man Walking, not so much. This book is totally about families coping with the violent death of a loved one. Murder victims and condemned men alike have fam...

News flash: convicts on Death Row spend a lot of time in prison. They're trapped in handcuffs and in leg chains, and they're behind bars. But as Dead Man Walking shows us, they're also trapped, and...

While it's never totally clear whether Pat or Robert themselves actually ended anyone's life, they at the very last helped rape and murder people. Their criminal guilt is sort of ambiguous—but th...

Let's say that Sister Helen Prejean is not particularly impressed with the government's ability to carry out justice. She argues that the death penalty process is fundamentally unfair and arbitrary...

You may be surprised to learn that Dead Man Walking is about death. No? Okay, well, let's get to specifics, then. For one thing, we spend most of the time waiting for either Pat or Robert to be exe...

Dead Man Walking is a political book: after all, Prejean's effort to abolish the death penalty is a political goal. So in some ways, you could say that Prejean has a positive attitude toward politi...

News flash: Sister Helen Prejean is a legit nun. So don't be surprised that religion is a big deal in Dead Man Walking.The thing is, though, that while Prejean herself is motivated by her Catholic...