JoyceLin0324

The punishmentexpert is the past of the real self. This can be learned from the various hintsin the article saying that the expert carries the stranger’s memory, ordirectly from the claim of the expert himself. The stranger resembles a present-tenseghost of the self, examining the past of the self from God's perspective. Hecan’t intervene with the decision of the self. The stranger seems to be soberand persistent to disclose the secret of March 5; while the expert appears to bemanic and painful. The two form of an entity meet since the stranger longs touncover what happened at March 5. As time goes by (well I don’t think timemakes any sense in this article), the stranger finds it impossible to approachMarch 5. Two reasons might account for it. For one, the self will die at thatday so people can’t relate to things that never happen. For the another, March5 1965 is just a symbol of a crucial milestone in the self’s life. The timesequence doesn’t real matter in this story. They are just a random reference ofthe everyday pain. 

According to Freud'stheory, the expert behaves much like people with melancholia. He has sufferedfrom an unknown trauma and haven’t figured out how to get rid of it yet. Inorder to maintain the balance of life, he needs to find a substitute object to getover the trauma. Therefore, he seeks help in studying all kinds of punishment, envisioninghow they will be operated on people to vent his pain. The four special datesare merely one of the arbitrary days when he fantasies the use of the object ofsuffering. Time order doesn’t work here, otherwise it is impossible to die in 1965but still perform executions in 1967 and 1971. He assumes to finally work out asubstitute for actual pain. We can see how obsessed the expert is whenreferring to the original text describing those four executions, as if they aresome kind of fireworks display, gorgeous and spectacular. It seems to be afeast as the expert are indulged himself in extreme punishments. The dates becomethe object of his punishment, a revenge to the actual pain. However, these fantasiescannot relieve himself from the actual trauma. He turns to hoping himself beingshoot by others, an extreme and optimal punishment to terminate his life. Atthe crucial moment, he shrinks away, not daring to pull the trigger in hisillusion. In the end, he thought of self-abuse, which is the last resort usedby melancholic patients when they can't find the object of revenge outside, to emptythe meaning of the self and loathe themselves so as to compensate the void melancholia.The expert chooses to hang himself, which is considered to be the most vulgarway to commit suicide by self-deprecated people. He eventually surroundshimself with them, the ultimate end of a melancholic person.