Death Row

While not an overtly political text, Death Row nonetheless invites readers to examine the ethics surrounding capital punishment through protagonist Talia’s experience awaiting execution. Talia’s experiences of isolation, dehumanizing treatment, and mental strain all illustrate the hardships of a capital sentence.

As Talia establishes the setting of the text in the early chapters, she also paints a clear picture of what life on death row is like. Talia makes the declarative statement in the opening lines: “It’s entirely possible that being on death row is worse than death […] The worst part about death row is the seclusion. Prisoners on death row are kept isolated from the rest of the prisoners” (7). The negative mental health effects of total isolation are a well-documented phenomenon, emphasizing to readers the extreme social segregation that death row inmates live within.

McFadden also includes details about the conditions of Talia’s imprisonment to emphasize other difficult aspects of her treatment, such as Talia spending “twenty-three hours of the day in this cell […] roughly the size of a parking space. Humans are not designed to be locked in a cage for 95 percent of the day” (7).