State-Raised Convict Summary and Analysis

Abbott begins by stating his purpose. He wishes to convey the thoughts and feelings he has experienced as a person who has spent the majority of his life behind bars. He compares his waking life to a "horrible nightmare." He is desperate to escape and finds himself still looking for opportunities to escape.

Unlike many inmates he has seen, he has not hardened himself or killed his emotions. Prison tears him up inside on a daily basis, though he rarely expresses such feelings. When he sees his reflection in a pane of glass, he becomes angry, and when with a crowd of prisoners, he must refrain himself from attacking someone, so powerful is Abbott's daily anger. Abbott shares a poem called "Lies" he wrote, involving violent imagery and a refrain of "Lie to me, then."

Abbott was born January...