Five Ways to Kill a Man
FIVE WAYS TO KILL A MAN
This poem is filled with irony. The author refers to several kinds of “warfare”. It is written much like an instruction guide or recipe book, each stanza tells of a time period of how human beings brutally killed each other telling the reader the manner in which a man can be efficiently killed. Each stanza deals with one method of killing; mankind has become crueler and has indeed tried to move further away from their victims in committing the barbaric acts. You are first dying for religion like in the first century they were hanged and then for crown and money. We see that the motive becomes less and less noble and personal to a point where it becomes impersonal and how you don’t know even how many people are killed. Each progressive historical event in the poem is showing that people have become dissent death. The cruelty of man against man is becoming very objective today. The author doesn’t feel anything and is describing to us as if it’s nothing personal to him to kill a man, it does not have any importance in front of him. This poem is making us aware of the human condition in general as there has always been conflict between humans. We reach a point in this poem where we don’t feel the sense of sympathy.
The first stanza is talking about killing a man in the 1st century which is referred to the crucifixion of Jesus. Here the reader is told that all that is required is a plank of wood and some nails and hammer to drive them home. Jesus was nailed to a plank of wood in form of cross and forced to walk up the hill like that and a crowd was required to humiliate the victim and witness the situation to learn a lesson for any future mistakes repetition. The people witnessing the scene had no humanity or feelings as they see the entire picture every day. The victim was asked to remove his cloak before the execution so that instead of a proper grave, his dead body would be left on top of the hill for birds and animals to feed on him. As his last wish, Jesus asked for a drink of water, but as an insult, a spongeful of vinegar was poured in his mouth, making his life miserable even before his death. This deliberately dead pan and emotionless tone underlines the lack of humanity that is fast becoming the feature of current war fare.
In the second stanza here he is talking about the war of roses between the two House of Yorks and House of Lancaster. The war started in 1399 it was a hundred year war. We were first fighting for our religion and then for our crown, and the king is fighting for the people. It is still not as bad because there is still some nobility in between them. The poet uses the War of Roses as a way to illustrate how wars were fought for the sake of crown and honor, whereas there was nothing noble in the brutal hand to hand warfare using common agricultural tools like bill hooks, axes and hammers that pierced armor