Five Ways to Kill a Man essay: Kieran Robinson
In the poetic text ‘Five Ways to Kill a Man’ by Edwin Brock, there are five methods of murder displayed to the reader, each method progressively going through time until it gets to the 20th century. As the methods progress through time, the methods of killing become less and less personal and indirect, showing how humans have evolved our ways of murder through technology, the poem tells us that technology has made it easier for us as individuals to indirectly kill many people. He uses a lot of language features throughout the text from biblical illusion like ‘you can make him carry a plank of wood to the top of a hill and nail him to it’. Which shows us the most direct way of killing portrayed in the poem, a very one on one method of killing somebody.
The poem uses an aspect of passage of time, from the first form of killing of crucifixion, which was highly direct and personal, to the final form of killing, the Hiroshima bombing carried out by the Americans in World War Two. To kill people now, we simply have to flick a switch to kill thousands, which was alluded to in the poem in stanza four. The poem could be a warning for the future, as to what could be install for humans if we continue to develop methods of killing each other beyond what we have now. This theory is backed up by the text telling us the consequences of using these weapons, an example of this from the text was “and land that nobody needs for many years.” Which was referring to nuclear wasteland which is inhabitable.
The text uses a wide variety of language features that require a lot of prior history knowledge, to fully understand what is going on in the text you need to know a bit about the time periods portrayed, an example of this is in stanza two, where they talk about medieval jousting. It talks about the metal cages that were worn, which was a reference to the chainmail armor that the jousters wore as they charged toward each other with the lance. In my opinion, if you did not understand or have prior knowledge of this time period, this may be a more difficult stanza to deeply understand.
The poetic text was highly informative about how over time the methods of killing another human have become a lot less personal and a lot more efficient with advancing technologies and the efficiency of killing becoming greater, where it took days to kill somebody in biblical times through the very personal method of crucifixion, shown in the first stanza, to killing thousands in an instant, shown through the forth stanza, with a very un-personal method of nuclear weaponry that was used in World War 2. We have come to a point in time where a flick of a switch can kill hundreds, even thousands of people instantaneously, the person behind the switch does not see the pain he or she has caused for not only the people directly involved, but humanity as a whole. Most likely this person will forget this deed, which is a total contrast to the methods such as crucifixion; the crucifier will remember the face of their victim for the rest of time, stamped in their memory.
The most interesting stanza was stanza five, it talks about the deadliest time period to be the 20th century, which is an interesting statement, it is saying that if you were placed or dumped into this time period, you’d surely die from one of the 4 things portrayed in the poem. The time period was full of death and it’s a warning, and an informative way to say how man has developed in a negative way, a way of killing on mass, with consequences that will last longer than our generation will.
We have come to a point in our time where thousands upon thousands are dying on mass, aided by technology, time is a number, and so are the people who are dying, to us, if a hundred thousand people die, the average person cannot think beyond “I cannot do anything, I’m just one person, what could I do to save ALL these people?” We rely too much on the thought of somebody else will solve the problem. The poem could be interpreted as a heavy warning to humanity, if we’ve come this far with technology, what does the future hold for us?