of the twentieth century, and leave him there.
Edwin Brock's ‘Five Ways to Kill a Man' is a satirical poem that questions the human attitude of brutally killing other people to satisfy one's greed. Edwin Brock examines the different ways used by man in the past to take the lives of others.
In the first stanza, Brock talks about the crucifixion of Christ in a casual way, but with deep undertones of sarcasm. The ‘cumbersome' method to torture and kill this one man includes a whole crowd walking up a hill as they force him to carry the cross on his back, and another man is required to drive a nail into him. They had to nail him onto the cross, and then pull the cross up erect, a very tiresome job. Then they had to torture him in various ways until he died, like by tying a sponge full of vinegar onto a rod and sticking it into his mouth when he said he was thirsty. They had to wait there and watch, until Christ eventually died, with the crow of the cock, at the crack of dawn. They went through the process of killing him so thoroughly, that after burying him, the only relics left were bits of his cloak that locals took as a memoir.
Then he progresses on to the medieval age, amongst the romantic ambience of English trees, where killing becomes a bit more refined. Here knights, foolishly slaughter one another to prove their mettle and valor, in the futile game of jousting, where nothing is ultimately accomplished, but one man always ended up dead, the other celebrating his death. They would face each other on royal white horses, attacking with their swords, only protected by their ridiculous metal cages, ready to kill or be killed. Similarly, crowns would go on conquering sprees, fighting huge wars to annex small kingdoms. Two countries, or two flags, would go to war, and huge numbers of people would die on both sides, before one prince emerged ‘victorious'. This prince would then hold a banquet to celebrate the deaths of the numerous people who he had just killed.
Then, Brock moves onto the world wars in the third and fourth stanza. Here, you didn't require nobility or numerous loyal knights to kill. All you had to do was wait for the wind to favor you, and then blow deadly gas at the enemies. The poet is referring to the poison gas that was popular during the world wars. Here, killing had become altogether a lot easier due to the modern technology. But now you needed a huge battlefield and had to build a lot of trenches. He refers to the bombs, mud-blackened boots, plagues of mice and the miserable living conditions in the ditches,. He talks of the dozens of war chants used to boost the morale of the soldiers, and make them feel proud and victorious about killing the ‘enemies'.
Then he describes the advent of the airplane and the atom bomb, a deadly combination that could kill millions with the touch of a button. You could fly miles above the heads of your victims, and kill them without ever having known them, or seen them in your life. As the pilot flew over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, all he had to flick a switch, and cruelly kill millions of people who he had never seen, under the orders of the ‘psychopath' Harry S. Truman, who he hadn't seen in his life either. Then, all you require is an ‘ocean to separate you', referring to the huge cultural gap between America and Japan, ‘two systems of governments' referring to the difference in the administration systems, and ‘a nation's scientists' and ‘several factories' to design and produce the ordnance. The poet writes ‘land that no one needs for several years', because the regions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became permanently affected due to the radiation, and even today, babies are being born with defects.
In the last stanza he questions his very existence, criticizing the times he lived in. The 20th century was so bad, and untimely deaths were occurring every day, mainly as a result of the Industrial Revolution. The era was overwrought with extreme, debilitating destitution, terrorism, bad hygiene, diseases, accidents, hatred, fights and wars, which were all claiming numerous lives already. So he says that now you don't need to go through any trouble at all to kill a person living in twentieth century England. You just let him live there, and chances are he'll die due to any cause but a natural one.
Though he doesn't directly insult science and technology, the poet subtly insults those who abuse the power of science. Through this poem we see how, as time advances, the advent of modern technology makes killing easier, faster, and more refined, gradually increasing the distance between the killer and the victim. In the biblical times, a whole crowd had to come in direct contact to kill one single person, but by the world wars, the killer didn't even have to see his victims, as he annihilated entire cities, comfortably sitting in his plane and controlling the fate of millions of innocents. Brock also notes in this emotionless poem, that this vast amount of killing has wiped out humanity completely, and left us desensitized to death, and completely devoid of emotions and sympathy. Brock demonstrates that over time, man changes, his reasons for killing changes, the ability technology presents, but the basic human tendency to kill remains the same.
