The poem
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.
The poem, "Five Ways to Kill a Man" by Edward Brock refers to humankind having suffered through the ages, from the classical ages to the Middle Ages, and from World War I to the Atomic and Cold War age. However, the poet suggests that perhaps the most crushing blow to humanity is the under- development of some nations, whose poverty and lack of technology have effectively left them in the previous century, creating such a great and painful schism in humanity that it is more devastating than any war.
this poem shows the danger of life through the ages and the progressiveness of death even though in the end it is always the same. i like the ending. quite ironic.
his poem are very march interesting,we learn many things about them,is not a way of saying is a child things is every ones poem 2 read.