by Laura Bates
The Tragedy of Othello is the third of Shakespeare’s “criminal tragedies,” and it is an important one for prisoners to study. Racial issues are especially sensitive and susceptible to misunderstanding in prison. At one prison I had visited before starting my own program, I was told that prisoners have threatened to kill one another over conflicting interpretations of this play, and I believed it. Hundreds of years ahead of his time, in Othello Shakespeare presents a controversial look at biracial marriage—and murder. A black man marrying, and then killing, a white woman is dangerous stuff!
Once again, Larry created a workbook that invited prisoners to look deeply into the text, and into themselves, but he opened with a lighthearted introduction:
Girl meets boy. Usually, you would expect a nice love story to follow. But, as most of us know, love is not always so predictable—or always so nice. Of all the experiences we go through, love is sometimes the most pleasurable, and sometimes it is the most painful. It is also one of the most used story lines of storytellers, and The Tragedy of Othello is no exception. However, it is unlikely that you will ever read a story that captures the misery of love’s parasite—jealousy—as well as it is captured in Shakespeare’s play. Anyone who has experienced the tail side of love’s coin will sympathize with Othello’s misery. The image of the betraying act that attaches itself to the victim’s thought like a leech that won’t let go. The pain, the anger, the hatred, the confusion, the blame, the guilt, and oh the torment! Despite the universal experiences of love and jealousy, the actions and reactions spawned by the act of betrayal are as diverse as their justifications: some simply live a lie to avoid the misery; some sever the ties to the loved one; some even take the life of the perpetrator. For a seasoned warrior, therapy for betrayal is most often violent. Othello is again no exception.
The considerations that follow each act of the play raise questions of morality, jealousy, envy, and the roles they play in criminal choices. Larry challenges prisoners to accept responsibility for their actions in a consideration titled “Your Mother”:
At the end of the play, after Othello kills his wife, one of the characters raises a great question: “Is this the noble Moor whom our full senate call all in all sufficient?” So, is it? Or is it really Iago, the instigator behind the scenes? Who among us cannot identify our Iago somewhere in our lives? But the fact is, no one can make you be anything that is not already you, even if that you is buried deep inside, no? You may say, “If Iago had not done such and such, Othello would not have done such and such.” If your mother was not forced to work away from home, she could have paid more attention to you and you might not have done such and such, but should your mother be in prison for what you have done? Who is responsible for what you do?
Accepting responsibility for one’s actions is an essential first step toward rehabilitation. Larry did indeed raise some “cool issues.”
CHAPTER 48
“Shakespeare Saved My Life”
Now that Larry was out of segregation and we were able to have normal conversations sitting side-by-side, without a steel door between us, I wanted to ask him to elaborate on what he had written in that survey he had handed me when he left the SHU.
“What did you mean,” I asked him, “when you said that Shakespeare saved your life?”
“I meant it both ways: literally and figuratively,” he told me. “Literally, Shakespeare saved my life. For so many years, I had been really self-destructive, on the razor’s edge every day. I’m confident that I would’ve done something drastic and ended up on death row. Or I would’ve one day found the courage to take my own life. So literally, he saved my life.”
It sounded like he was talking about suicide, but I couldn’t believe it—I didn’t want to believe it.
“And I meant it figuratively,” he continued. “Shakespeare offered me the opportunity to develop new ways of thinking through these plays. I was trying to figure out what motivated Macbeth, why his wife was able to make him do a deed that he said he didn’t want to do just by attacking his ego: ‘What, are you soft? Ain’t you man enough to do it?’ As a consequence of that, I had to ask myself what was motivating me in my deeds, and I came face-to-face with the realization that I was fake, that I was motivated by this need to impress those around me, that none of my choices were truly my own.
“And as bad as that sounds, it was the most liberating thing I’d ever experienced because that meant that I had control of my life. I could be anybody I wanted to be. I didn’t have to be some fake guy that my buddies wanted me to be. When I started reading Shakespeare, I was still in segregation; that circumstance didn’t change. But I wasn’t miserable anymore. Why? The only thing that was different was the way that I saw myself. So the way that I felt about myself had to be the source of all my misery. I’m of the opinion that we are the source of our misery; we perpetuate our own misery. And that realization is empowering! So Shakespeare saved my life, both literally and figuratively. He freed me, genuinely freed me.”
From down the hall, we heard the officers turn on their radio to a country music station. Larry was startled. He looked around. It took him a few seconds to figure out where the sound was coming from. After ten years in isolation, he was unaccustomed to processing so many external stimuli. I tried to refocus his attention.
“Where do you think you would be now without Shakespeare?”
“I wouldn’t be anywhere I am today, I know that,” he replied. “I’d either be in deeper trouble—tried to escape and been in worse trouble than I was—or maybe I would’ve just that one day developed the courage to…you know what I mean?”
“Suicide?” I asked, hesitantly.
“Heck, yeah,” he replied. “I was ready to go! I can’t tell you how much I was.”
I just looked at him. I had no idea.
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t get me all choked up. You’re gonna make me all sad and teary-eyed, and I’m a big strong convict.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why, man. ’Cause I’m really just glad to be where I am.” He took a deep breath. “Whew!”
“It’s a happy thing.”
“Yeah. Very much so. But it’s like, I don’t know, you get back to where you were, and you’re that close…I’m getting all sad. Not sad, but choked up.”
“You’re alive.”
“I don’t think being dead worried me too much. Obviously, it must have somewhat. I can honestly say the one reason that I didn’t do it, and there may be other subconscious reasons, but the one reason is I kept picturing the impact on my loved ones. I was more worried about how they would take it. I didn’t want to hurt them anymore.”
“Good.”
“Yeah. I mean, it was a good thought. But the point is, the being dead part never worried me. It seemed like a very plausible alternative. So that’s not even what makes me the happiest. I like being alive, I like my life, but what makes me the happiest is that I just really feel like I can go anywhere and do anything. I make decisions now ’cause I want to. Just the liberty in it, the freedom in it, that’s what makes me the happiest. So maybe that’s why I got choked up.”
I was speechless. I had worked with this prisoner for more than three years, but I had no idea that Shakespeare—and I—had that kind of impact on him. I had never had that kind of impact on anyone. I had never saved anyone’s life before.
I found myself wondering what his life would have been like had he been introduced to Shakespeare—or to a caring teaching on any subject matter—earlier in his life. There might have been one less man in prison—and one more man alive.
“You keep staring at me like that, man,” said Larry, “and I am gonna start freakin’ crying or something.”
CHAPTER 49
Shakespeare Saved My Life
It wasn’t until I started writing this book that I realized that Larry’s comment applied to me as well. In addition to challenging me to break out of my “fear of boats” prison, there was another episode o
f Shakespeare saving my life—less metaphorically and more literally, in this case. It went back to my first experience when I started working in prison, through the PACE Institute at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, providing literacy assistance to inmates studying for their GED. My first experience could easily have been my last.
After becoming intrigued about working in prison through a discussion with my husband’s friend, I learned of the opportunity to do volunteer literacy work at the jail through the community service department of the publishing company where I worked full-time as a proofreader while putting myself through college. Every Friday night after work, a minivan drove six of us volunteers across the city to the massive jail complex at Twenty-Sixth Street and California.
One night, I noticed that there were only three of us in the van, and the other two seemed unusually quiet. When we arrived at the jail and entered the building, we were told that the security level at the facility had been increased. The check-in procedure this evening would include a—gulp!—strip search. Conducted very discreetly by a same-sex officer behind a curtain, the search did not really bother me. But I did wonder at the reason for such heightened security.
“Is this normal?” I asked the matronly officer as she scrutinized each article of clothing that I handed to her. Because I was so new to the world of incarceration, I had no idea whether this was routine or extreme. She merely shrugged and turned her attention to my socks. Whatever it was, the officers didn’t seem to know…or want to tell.
When we arrived in the education wing, the director informed us that there had been an escape attempt the previous week. Several prisoners had managed to grab the guns from a couple of officers (or maybe the officers had been bribed), and at gunpoint, they held a group of hostages while negotiating their demanded release. Their hostages were the teachers and other volunteers, some of whom were riding to the prison in the van with me. The incident had happened the previous Friday night.
Friday nights were my usual schedule at the prison, but it just so happened that I was not there that Friday. My husband had wanted me to see a student production of Othello at his university that night. I don’t recall why; he wasn’t involved in the production, and neither were any of his students. Neither he nor I were Shakespeare enthusiasts at the time. (In fact, I ended up a Shakespeare scholar through another odd series of happenstances, but that’s a subject for another book.)
In any case, on that night, when I could’ve been one of those teachers on the prison floor with a gun to her head, Shakespeare saved my life.
CHAPTER 50
Shakespeare Could Save Your Life Too
I was once interviewed by a local news reporter who asked the common questions: Why are you doing this? Why do you care about these prisoners?
“I do care about them,” I replied, “but, hey, I also care about you and me. Most of these guys will be on the street one day, and when they move in next door to you or enroll in one of my classes on campus, I want them to be less violent than they were when they came to prison.” If Shakespeare saves the life of a violent criminal, through rehabilitation, then he saves the life of potential future victims. At least, that’s the conviction that drove my work during my decade in supermax.
My research confirmed that the program indeed had such an effect: lessening the likelihood of violent incidents in a population with extensive histories of violence. I studied the conduct records of twenty of the most long-standing and active participants in the program and found that their combined conduct history accounted for more than six hundred violent or Class A offenses (the most severe category), including weapons charges and assaults, in their “B.S.” (Before Shakespeare) years. During their time in the program, there were only two charges total, and none was violent or Class A. In fact, of the hundreds of prisoners who have been in the program—some for months, some for years—not one committed a violent offense.
I had the opportunity to test my hypothesis one day. As usual, I was sitting surrounded by convicted killers. I had been working with most of these particular prisoners for years by then, and the group included Larry as well, so I felt comfortable asking the ultimate question:
“Can Shakespeare save lives?”
“Ah, nah…” answered Gilmore, our newest member.
The rest of the group remained silent. Larry was waiting to see how I wanted to respond to this rejection of what had become the fundamental principle of our program.
“I’m still working on you, Mr. Gilmore,” I said with a good-hearted chuckle, and the others joined in.
I appreciated his honesty, and I had to admit that he could well be right. But, if he was, then I also had to face the fact that I may have been wrong all along, may have been wasting my time, may have accomplished nothing more than creating, as the argument goes, “smarter criminals.”
Then Leonard spoke up: “I’d like to give my perspective on that.”
He commanded respect through his deep booming voice, his large physical frame, and his extensive criminal record that included homicide of an officer. That’s as extreme as it gets. But he was also very thoughtful and insightful, and he addressed the question deliberately, weighing every word.
“I believe,” he began, “that there are some people who, if a program has the ability to reach a person’s soul to a degree and allow that person to seek healing and redemption, I believe that some—not all, but some—may be prevented from walking across that line of no return. ’Cause once you do it, you can’t go back. You can’t bring that person back.”
Another prisoner added that “most murders aren’t some passionately planned thing; most are just stupid circumstantial behaviors.”
“Right!” said another. “Reactive.”
“I believe,” Leonard continued, “as a convict having been allowed to interact with Shakespeare, that you and this program have allowed people to release anger, to release thoughts of revenge, various forms of frustrated thoughts or confusions. And when those things cloud judgment, that’s when things happen. I know for me, it has been an alternative outlet. And when you talk about the issue of murder, I believe that if an individual had a small alternative, a moment to think, a person to lean on, in that split second, it probably never would’ve happened.”
“There is a large portion of that population—the murder population—that only need a slight influence to do different,” added another. “Not necessarily good versus bad, but they may see a new approach for whatever it is that they’re after. So, yeah, absolutely.”
“We’ve saved a life?” I asked.
“Saved my life,” said Larry.
“Has Shakespeare saved a victim’s life?” I asked.
“Yes. For sure, it’s saved one other person.”
That was the answer I was hoping for. And it was echoed by another prisoner, who added: “At least two.”
(Photo credit: Indiana State University)
CHAPTER 51
Doing Life
Man, I’m set for life! That’s the good news.
The bad news is, I’m doing life.
That comment was uttered by one prisoner acknowledging that all of the drug money he accumulated through his criminal career was useless now that he was in prison. But there’s life and there’s life: that was the next lesson I learned.
It was the summer of our third year, and I was preparing for a performance of a Shakespeare script (scenes from Macbeth, Hamlet, and Othello) written by the SHU prisoners. Because segregated prisoners could not come out of their cages to perform their scripts, I enlisted another group of prisoners from open population. Like the prisoners I worked with in segregation, this group consisted almost entirely of convicted killers, most of them serving what they called “all day”: that is, life. But I learned that not all life sentences are the same. There’s life—and there’s life without.
For example, Patrick (who was playing Hamlet) had a life sentence, but he expected to be paroled in a few years. James (playing Othello) had a lif
e sentence, was released once, violated his parole, and would be paroled again. (By the time this book is in print, he will be on the streets.) Larry, on the other hand, had life without the possibility of parole. He did not even have the right to file an appeal of his sentence, having waived that right nearly twenty years ago in his original sentence hearing when he was only seventeen years old.
Even those carrying sentences numbering hundreds of years were better off than Larry; at least they had a number to negotiate with. Joe (with his long hair in a ponytail, playing Lady Macbeth) managed to reduce his sentence by a hundred years. Dustin (our Macbeth) was sentenced to 199 years but reduced it to fifty. With time cuts and good behavior, he could be out before he reaches the age of fifty.
And then there is the discrepancy in the way in which the crime is interpreted. Just as there is life and life, there is murder and murder. Larry was under the influence of drugs, alcohol, and peer pressure. Jon (playing the villain Iago) killed two rival drug dealers in a calculated act of revenge; he could get out at the age of forty-two. Greg (our resident singer-songwriter with a melodious and gentle voice) premeditatedly killed both of his parents, shooting them as they slept; he’ll be only thirty- five when he’s released.
Like Greg and Dustin and Patrick, Larry was a teenager at the time of his conviction. On the other hand, other prisoners I worked with committed the same crime as adults. For example, Dan committed murder in his twenties and will serve thirty years. Leon was in his twenties and will serve thirty years. Jack was in his twenties when he premeditatedly killed his wife, and then he killed a man in prison. But after serving less than twenty years, he was released. No matter how much I learned in prison, there were some things I would never understand.
Larry is, in fact, the only prisoner I’ve ever met who was convicted as a juvenile and is serving life without parole. There is much legal debate currently on the unconstitutional nature of sentencing juveniles to life in prison. The argument is based on the idea that teenagers are most capable of rehabilitation. Through his good work in the Shakespeare program, in college, in other prison programs and job assignments, as well as in his acceptance of responsibility for his crime, Larry consistently demonstrated evidence of rehabilitation for nearly ten years. But every request for the right to appeal his sentence was denied.