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Thomas Roe's POV
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The communal spaces and open water could only do so much to cleanse the place of its past.
Surely at this point any visitor entering the penitentiary, as one would enter a museum, would not be met with _???_* but a faint vibe, reminiscent of the true horrific conditions of this institution.
No matter, Eastern State as it is now, a true institution of learning, is the best form of itself that has ever been and undoubtedly could ever be.
I see the ultimate failure of what could have been and excellent way to reform prisoners.
I see how everyone lived and cannot imagine how they managed to stay alive—the conditions this place holds serves to no ones sustainability to survive.
Communication can’t be stopped.
Eastern State Penitentiary now looks the way it made the prisoners feel: empty, broken, and alone.
People here visiting with curiosity, with awe for the idea of penitentiary, don’t know how the inmates’ lives here were.
It is still in no better condition that it was when he was alive, but now that the context has changed, it is looked on with more reverence than it deserves.
It is very much the same; it is harsh and unforgiving.
Even the building itself is decaying, like all these past objects have the structure of enclosure and abuse and falling.
How is it possible that people can really be penitent in this mentally torturing condition?
It’s not going to make a difference for the guilty, in such a place of fear and loneliness, nothing could evoke their mortality when they’re in torture.
*Agatha, I think this was yours. The word looked like “omide”, but that definitely isn’t a word, and after a second and a third opinion, I got nothing. Sorry. ):