Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[mwey]

Hi teachers,

This is another part that I don't understand when I read novel "The Green Mile". I put in green words to clarify. I underlined the sentence I don't understand. It looks to me that the author is comparing execution between electric chair and drug today. I especially don't understand "it vacates, jumps to someone else" means. Please help. Thank you.
Mark

He would sit down with Old Sparky(electric chair) in a little while, and Old Sparky would make an end to him�but whatever it was that had done that awful thing was already gone, and now he lay on his bunk, letting his little companion(a mouse) run squeaking over his hands. In a way, that was the worst; Old Sparky never burned what was inside them, and the drugs they inject them with today don�t put it to sleep. It vacates, jumps to someone else, and leaves us to kill husk s that aren�t really alive anyway.

[pugachevV]

I'm not surprised that you found this difficult. It's a very oblique way to say that the person who's being executed is not the same person who committed the crime for which he is being executed, the evil has already left and gone into someone else and only the empty shell is being killed.

It's a load of liberal rubbish.