Five Ways To Kill A Man Analysis

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do this
properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation's scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways
to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat
is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

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I don't believe on "Five Ways To Kill A Man" that he was refering to gas chanbers in the holocaust, but refering to clorine gas also known as Mustard Gas. My reasoning for this is that it says in the poem right in front of me, "IF THE WIND ALLOWS, BLOW GAS AT HIM" which u wouldn't have to worry about if being blown inside a chamber, but outside over no mans land u would.

| Posted on 2009-06-03 | by a guest

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actually this does not refer to jesus, just crusificition in general. and the gassing is not hitler in ww2, it is trench gas in ww1.

| Posted on 2009-02-05 | by a guest

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This poem is realy good becaouse it talks about the olden ways of killing some one

| Posted on 2009-01-23 | by a guest

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in this poem Edwin Brock is trying to tell five different types of terrible incidents taken place in which death has taken place.first stanza tells about the Jesus Christ's crucifiction.in the second stanza he is telling about the knights,how brave they were?in the third stanza telling about the cruelty of Adolf Hitler,heh is the only person uptill now responsible for killing five million people.over here Edwin is talking about the concentrated camps,where a large amount of people were put in a small room and badly suffocated because of a gas blowed in the room.in the fourth stanza he is talking about the massacre occored in World War 2 where capatalist and communist countries fought with each other.last stanza is a perfect stroke given by the poet which makes us realize that how we are filling this world with dishonesty and cruelty.the people living in 20th century were materialistic,harsh on other's lives how we are ruining the world.

| Posted on 2008-03-28 | by a guest