This poem was essentially written about Oscar Wilde’s experiences in the prison, or rather, one very specific incident that shocked him profoundly, the execution of his inmate.
While the title says Ballad, the poem almost seems to be an elegy to lament and question the death of his inmate. The poem consists of 109 stanzas that are categorized into 6 parts.
ANALYSIS
The first stanza begins with the description of the “blood and wine” incident, or the murder by the inmate of the thing he loved. One of the most interesting things about this poem is the way there is a reiteration of the fact that the man killed “the thing he loved”. It clearly seems to be because the speaker yearns to humanize the act of the inmate. In this stanza, the essence of the actual murder is captured. It speaks of the man who killed the thing he loved, and how his hands were tainted with “blood and wine”. The blood part is obvious, but perhaps “wine” indicates that the inmate was intoxicated when he committed the crime. This might have pushed him to do something he wouldn’t have done if he were in his senses. In the second stanza, the speaker speaks of the hardships faced by the man, which are juxtaposed by the poet with his regretful attitude towards the crime he committed.
By this time, it is abundantly clear that the crime was one of passion and not committed in cold blood. In the next few lines, the poet delineates the psychological condition of the prisoner. Soon, the speaker gets to know that the inmate has been sentenced to death and he is shocked.
This leads him to diverge from the point of the actual events that are happening into a world of his own introspection over whether the inmate’s crime was really a great crime. The speaker lists out all the different ways in which men have killed the thing they loved. In the end of this particular section of the poem, he says that
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow so cold.
This can be taken as a justification, but it seems to be a product of his frustration at the hypocrisy of the sentencing. He means that men have always killed the thing they loved, and in many cruel ways, but they have never really be executed for it. In his anguish over the execution of his inmate, he says that while all men kill what they love, “yet each man does not die.”
In the following stanzas he describes the kind of shame and disgrace that the inmate was doomed to live with. He is essentially trying to show how we so often demonize the men who do terrible things without seeing them as human beings. He then talks about the actual execution, reiterating that hes really never seen a man who watched “with such a wistful eye”.
This phrase is an extremely important part of the poem as it shoes the other side of the crime, the side that people never think about. This side is the aftermath. He says that the man didn’t try to resist what was happening to him, perhaps implying that he regretted his crime so much that he felt that he deserved his punishment. The speaker describes the everyday things that happen around him, apathetic to the loss of life that will happen and shake the prisoners. This part of the poem is essentially written in order to show the cruelty that the prisoners are doomed to live with.
The most extensive portion of the poem covers the last days before the execution. It is interesting that he seems to do fine while the other prisoners are tormented. It might again bring up the idea that the inmate might not actually want to live with the pain of knowing that he killed the woman he loved and might believe that he deserves his impending death.
After the execution, the body and essence of the man is mocked by the prison staff while the speaker believes that the man is resting in peace. This poem shows the tragedy of imprisonment and the importance of humanizing those who commits crimes. It shows the cruelty that men in prison have to survive, and very often don’t.
