In "A Hanging", Orwell shows us how the prisoners are regarded as none-humans. Their cells, are as cages of animals. How they are considered dead before their execution and any attempt to prolong their lives is questioned and is found surprising by the guards who look at it as an attempt to tamper with their predetermined fate.
Orwell shows us that this regard for the prisoners is not racial as it may occur to some, but an effect of power, As the Burmese royalist laughs the loudest at the humorous remarks made about the dead prisoner.
The translucent moment experienced by the narrator brings him this meaning: "It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working - bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming - all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned - reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone - one mind less, one world less."
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