Margaret Atwood Quotes
I was horrified in high school by the fate of the hanged maids at the end of the Odyssey; it seemed unfair to me, even then.
Atwood, Margaret. Introduction. The Penelopiad, Knopf, 2005, p. xiv.
Although this is generally followed as a legal principle in America, states like Texas have executed felons who most other jurisdictions would see as Coke’s “mad man.”
More and more evidence had been mounting that innocent men had been mistakenly sentenced to death throughout the country and Texas executed more people than any other state.
Barjawan was a eunuch slave. Islamic rulers typically used slaves as major governmental appointees. That way they had the unilateral power of life and death over the official which under Islamic law they did not have with a free appointee. Since fellow Muslims could not be held as slaves, most governmental officials were Christians, Jews or other non-believers. The result was that Muslims never developed a culture of administration, management and bureaucracy until very recently.
In modern America, we have improved somewhat. Now both kinds of issues take many years.
Margaret Eleanor Atwood CC OOnt CH FRSC is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, and two graphic novels, as well as a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including the Booker Prize (twice), Arthur C. Clarke Award, Governor General's Award, Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television.
