FIVE WAYS TO KILL A MAN

This poem by Edwin Brock is often considered a poem against war, whereas in fact it is a poem about the loss of
humanity. It is written much like an instruction guide or recipe book, telling the reader the manner in which a man
can be efficiently killed. Each stanza deals with one method of killing; each one distancing the killer further from
his victim, till in the last stanza there is neither killer nor victim, but just a living death.
In the first stanza the crucifixion of Jesus is referred to. Here the reader is told that all that is required is a plank of
wood and some nails and hammer to drive them home. This deliberately dead pan and emotionless tone
underlines the lack of humanity that is fast becoming the hall mark of current war fare with its references to
"collateral damage", a conveniently clinical term for civilian casualties.
In the second stanza the poet uses the War of Roses as a way to illustrate how wars were fought for the sake of
crown and honour, whereas there was nothing noble in the brutal hand to hand warfare using common
agricultural tools like bill hooks axes and hammers that pierced armour with ease. The armour is called "a metal
cage", the weapons "shaped and chased in a traditional way. All you need is a prince, two flags (representing
the Houses of York and Lancaster) and the English countryside marred with the killings of battle. You require a
castle to hold your banquet in to celebrate your victory while the brutal and ignoble nature of this war is hidden in
the image of "white horses" and "English trees". In the next stanza we are told that we may dispense with nobility
altogether as the poet brings our attention to the cruel practise of gas warfare in the First World War. "...you may
if the wind allows, blow gas at him..." sounds as harmless as a child blowing bubbles or at the most someone
blowing cigarette smoke in your face. In 1915 when the British used gas cylinders to send Chlorine gas towards
the German front lines the wind direction changed and the gas came back to poison the British soldiers. In this
stanza the poet brings our attention to the other horrors of trench warfare, as he says to kill a man in this way you
also need bomb craters, a mile of mud, a plague of rats. This sounds exactly like a list of ingredients for a recipe.

As we dehumanize ourselves further in the fourth stanza we are told we may fly miles about our victim and
"dispose" of him by pressing a small switch. But now we require an ocean to separate us, two different ideologies
and scientists and a psychopath. This is an obvious reference to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
World War II. We are left with "land that no one needs for several years", as if that was the end of this exercise.

However the argument is succinctly clinched in the last stanza of the poem in just four lines. These methods after
all are too cumbersome and it is far simpler and more direct to see that our victim is living somewhere in the
middle of the twentieth century and leave him there.

This the most telling part of this poem. We find here the hopelessness of life as we know it today. We must kill
our humanity to survive in the world of today, with daily news reports of children dying of disease and
malnutrition, people becoming victims of religious intolerance, suicide attacks, hour killings, suicides due to
joblessness in developing countries and the sheer scale of human idiocy in destroying its own race. We have had
to desensitize ourselves to this daily onslaught of pain in order to survive and in so doing we are in fact slowly
dying. It is too painful to shed tears over every mining victim, every bomblast victim, every woman stigmatised.
So we kill ourselves, we kill our hopes and our very desire to live. We become as mechanical as the tone of this
poem in our efforts to deal with the horrors of daily life, with that accident we see during rush hour, with the child
victim of some paedophile we see on the news. We learn to numb our pain in a world full of pin-pricks. In doing
so we may as well be dead.

In short this poem, is brutally simple, its tone clinical to the point of instructional prose, and yet it does so well
what Wordsworth said a poem must, appear to the reader as a remembrance of his own highest thoughts. The
average man today is helpless in the face of what a few misguided leaders are doing to destroy humanity, and
this poem voices for us this frustration and this bitter truth. Millions of protestors all around the world could not
dissuade America and Britain from attacking Iraq. This poem stands witness to how our hopes and the voice of
humanity can be easily silenced. In doing so it urges us to speak up against our spiritual death and resurrect our
dying humanity.






ENTERPRISE
Enterprise is an allegory of human condition on this planet and of the frequent efforts, failure and frustrations to
which man is subject by the very nature of earthly life. The poet describes a spiritual pilgrimage where each
pilgrim faces difficulties and disillusionment along the way. Thus, in the Enterprise a group of people undertake
a journey moved by noble aspirations, but it all ends in failures and frustrations as is usually the case with human
attempts at some noble achievement. The pilgrimage becomes a weary trek, by the time the goal is reached. The
goal is alluring but the process of reaching it empties the victory of its glamour and glory. A number of people,
including the poet decide to go on a pilgrimage. They are city dwellers and the journey they undertake is to some
romantic, primitive hinterland. They start with hope, courage and determination, with their minds full of noble
ideas and ideals. They are out to make some heroic effort, which will lead to some noble achievements. Their
minds are exalted and they are not afraid of any dangers and difficulties. This stage of the journey symbolizes the
stage of innocence that man enjoys in his boyhood and early youth, when he is entirely unconscious of the
frustrations and failures which life brings at every stage.
But this innocence is lost and in the next stage of the journey the pilgrims face dangers and difficulties.
They continue on their onward journey of exploration. The objects and forces of nature are out to frustrate human
endeavour like the oppressive heat of the sun. The group of travellers is able to put up very well with the dangers
and difficulties for some time and continue to journey in hope. They note down the goods being bought and sold
by the peasants and observe the ways of serpents and goats. They pass through three cities where a sage had
taught, but does not care to find out what he had taught. But soon there are distractions and diversions. The
difficulties and dangers posed by mans physical environment are not as damaging as those that result from his
own insufficiency.
Soon there are differences of opinion among the travellers and they began to quarrel over petty matters.
They had to cross a piece of wasteland a desert patch, and they could not agree as to the best way of doing so.
One of their friends-rather proud of him stylish prose-was so angry that he left their company. The shadow of
discord fell on their enterprise, and it has continued to grow. Bickering over petty matters, needless quarrels over
trifles, hatred of, and hostility to, those who hold different opinions, is ingrained in human nature, and thus man
carries the seeds of his failure and frustration within his own self. So do these pilgrims who, despite their quarrel,
continue their onward journey.
But none the less, they are divided into groups, each group attacking the other. Engrossed in their quarrel,
they lose their ways and forget noble aspirations which had motivated their enterprise. Their goal and their
purpose were forgotten and their idealism is all gone. Some of them decide to leave the group. Frustration and
difficulties overwhelm the human spirit and many do not have the courage to face the realities of life. They seek
relief in escape and withdrawal. Many of us are such introverts. Some try to pray and seek Divine assistance and
blessings, forgetting that God help those who help themselves. Their leader feels that he smelt the sea and he
feels that they have reached a dead end, and must go back. Their pilgrimage must end.
Still they persist, though their journey has lost all its significance. They are dirty and shabby for they have
been deprived of such common needs as soap, are broken in spirit and bent down physically. Such is the
ultimate end of all human enterprises; this is the essential truth of human life. Absorbed in their pretty quarrels
and tried and exhausted, frustrated and at bay, the travellers do not even hear the thunder and even if they do
so, they ignore their significance. The thunder is symbolic of spiritual regeneration and fertility but they do not
care for it. The extreme hopelessness of man at the end of lifes journey is thus stressed.
The pilgrims even come to doubt the very worth and significance of the journey. It seems to them to have
been meaningless and futile. All their noble aspirations are forgotten, there is sorrow and suffering on every face,
and they are conscious of the fact that their actions have neither been great nor even. Efforts to escape from the
realities of human existence are futile. We must accept the limitations of our lot and do our best within those
limitations. Heroism means the acceptance of our lot in life and the doing of our best in the service of God and
humanity. Therefore the poem concludes on a note of exultation and optimism when the pilgrims realize that it is
not by undertaking long hazardous journeys but by doing the right deeds that everyone can receive Gods grace.




The Lumber Room
The text under analysis is written by an outstanding British novelist and short story writer Hector
Munro. Hector Hugh Munro (December 18, 1870 November 13, 1916), better known by the pen
name Saki, was a British writer, whose witty and sometimes macabre stories satirized Edwardian
society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry
and Dorothy Parker. His tales feature delicately drawn characters and finely judged narratives. Saki's
world contrasts the effete conventions and hypocrisies of Edwardian England with the ruthless but
straightforward life-and-death struggles of nature. Nature generally wins in the end.
Owing to the death of his mother and his father's absence abroad he was brought up during his
childhood, with his elder brother and sister, by a grandmother and two aunts. It seems probable that
their stem and unsympathetic methods account for Munros strong dislike of anything that smacks of
the conventional and the self-righteous. He satirized things that he hated. Munro was killed on the
French front during the First World War. In her Biography of Saki Munros sister writes: One of
Munros aunts, Augusta, was a woman of ungovernable temper, of fierce likes and dislikes,
imperious, a moral coward, possessing no brains worth speaking of, and a primitive disposition.
Naturally the last person who should have been in charge of children. The character of the aunt in The
Lumber-Room is Aunt Augusta to the life.
The story tells about a little orphan Nicholas who was trusted to his tyrannical and dull-witted aunt.
One day Nicholas was in disgrace, so he duped his Aunt into believing that he was somehow trying
to get into the gooseberry garden, but instead had no intention of doing so but did sneak into the
Lumber Room. There a tremendous picture of a hunter and a stag opened to him. Soon his aunt tried
to look for the boy and slipped into the rain-water tank. She asked Nicholas to fetch her a ladder but
the boy pretended not to understand her, he said that she was the Evil One. The story presents
extremely topical subjects. Actually, the whole novel can be divided into two parts: Childs world
and Adults world. The author seems to be suggesting that adulthood causes one to lose all sense of
fun, imagination. Adults become obsessed with insignificant trivialities, like the Aunt which is
obsessed about punishing and nitpicking on the children. Children in Munros stories are very
imaginative. Nicholas imagines the whole story behind the tapestry while the Aunt comes out with
boring stories and ideas like a circus or going to the beach. She tries to convince Nicholas about the
fun of a trip to the beach, of circus, but lacks the imagination to sound convincing. She describes the
beach outing as beautiful and glorious but cannot say in detail how it will be beautiful or glorious
because she is not creative. As for the Lumber room, it is symbolic of fun and imagination of the
childs world which is definitely lacking in the adult world. It emphasizes the destruction of life that
adulthood and pride can bring. The Aunts world is full of warped priorities. She puts punishment and
withholding of enjoyment as more important than getting to know and molding the lives of the
children. She keeps all the beautiful and creative things of the house locked away in a lumber-room so
as not to spoil them but in doing so, the purpose of the objects which is to beauty the house, is lost,
leaving the house dull and colorless. The excerpt is homogeneous. The story is narrated in the 3
rd

person. This allows the reader to access the situation and the characters in an unbiased and objective
manner. This is especially so because the characters are complex, having both positive and negative
viewpoints. The third person point of view is impersonal which fits the impersonal atmosphere of the
household. The text can be divided into several parts:
The exposition, in which we learn about little Nicholas, his cousins and his strict
aunt. Nicholas got into his aunts disgrace. So his cousins were to be taken to
Jagborough sands that afternoon and he was to stay at home. The Aunt was
absolutely sure that the boy was determined to get into the gooseberry garden
because I have told him he is not to.
The complication, when Nicholas got into an unknown land of lumber-room.
Forbidden fruit is sweet and truly the lumber-room is described as a storehouse of
unimagined treasure. Every single item brings life and imagination to Nicholas and
is symbolic of what the adult of real world lacks. He often pictured to himself what
the lumber-room was like, since that was the region that was so carefully sealed
from youthful eyes. The tapestry brings to life imagination and fantasy within
Nicholas, the interesting pots and candlesticks bring an aesthetic quality, visual
beauty which stirs up his creative mind; and lastly a large square book full of
coloured pictures of birds. And such birds! They allow Nicholas to learn in a fun
and exciting way.
The climax of the text. While the boy was admiring the colouring of a mandarin
duck, the voice of his aunt came from the gooseberry garden. She got slipped into
the rain-water tank and couldnt go out. She demanded from the boy to bring her a
ladder, but he said her voice didnt sound like his aunts. You may be the Evil One
tempting me to be disobedient. Justice must be done. The Aunt tasted the fruit of
her own punishment on the children. She is accused of falling from grace, of lying
to Nicholas about jam and thus termed the Evil One. She feels what it is like to be
condemned.
The denouncement. The Aunt is furious and enforces in the house. She maintained
the frozen muteness of one who has suffered undignified and unmerited detention in
a rain-water tank for thirty-five minutes. Nicholas was also silent, in the absorption
of an enchanting picture of a hunter and a stag.

The plot is ordered chronologically, each episode is given with more and more emphasis. The authors
choice of vocabulary and stylistic devices is admirable. The author uses a large variety of stylistic
devices, such as epithets, which can be divided into two categories: those, which are related to Childs
world (grim chuckle, alleged frog, unknown land, stale delight, mere material pleasure, bare and
cheerless, thickly growing vegetation) and the one, which depicts a Grown-ups world lacking any
clear thinking (frivolous ground, veriest nonsense, considerable obstinacy, trivial gardening
operation, unauthorized intrusion). They help the author to emphasize a deep dissension between
generations, to convey a thrilling power of childs creative mind. There are a lot of metaphors (often
sustained) in the story: a circus of unrivalled merit and uncounted elephants (to lay stress on the
Aunts narrow-mindedness), the flawlessness of the reasoning, self-imposed sentry-duty (characterizes
the Aunt as a very strict person), art of fitting keys into keyholes and turning locks, region that was so
carefully sealed from youthful eyes, many golden minutes of a ridiculously short range. With the help
of these stylistic means the offer unfolds a theme in which stupidity, moral degradation, hypocrisy and
ambition play their sorry parts.
There are some similes in the text: Bobby wont enjoy himself much, and he wont race much either;
the aunt-by-assertion (The author uses Nicholas own word choice to show that he does not accept his
aunts authority over him. This also may be a subtle criticism of Nicholas rebellious attitude.); and
some periphrases: the Evil One, the prisoner in the tank. (These devices provide authors irony and
essential clue to the character).
The author also enriches the story with a device of rhetorical question: But did the huntsman see, what
Nicholas saw, that four galloping wolves were coming in his direction through the wood?; and
hyperbole: How did she howl. The following stylistic devices contribute to the expressiveness of the
text. There are two traits always present in Hector Munros books, which single him out of
commonplace writers, they are irony and witty. The style of writing is satirical in a humorous way.
The author uses a witty tone to mimic characters in order to subtly criticize them. The criticism is
done in a subtle way that is humorous. For example, Aunt's condescending tone in describing
Nicholas prank: disgrace, sin, fell from grace. The author is obviously using the Aunts own word
choice to reveal her self-righteous, holier-than-thou attitude. This is a subtle criticism of her arrogance
which she is blind to.
The author uses irony to poke fun and criticize the Aunt. For instance, trip to Jagborough which is
meant to spite Nicholas fails. Instead of being a punishment for the child, it became a treat for him
whereas it became a torture to those who went. The Aunts conception of the paradise. The real
paradise is the Lumber-room not the garden. This reveals the irony that the ideal world of an adult is
dull and boring to that of a child.
The story is a remarkable insight into human character. It also reveals Aunts virtues and vices. In the
story the Aunt is represented as a self-righteous and moralistic person. She uses a hypocritical tone
and exaggerates a childs prank comparing it to a grave sin. She thinks of herself as a wiser - she
doesnt like to be in the wrong. Being cold, lacking of love, she is more concerned with punishing the
children: she keeps jam and goodies away from them, she bars them from the beautiful places in the
house like the garden and lumber-room. Unable to understand and communicate with children, she is
not even aware when her sons feet was hurt. She dictates their lives for them, insisting on where they
should go for entertainment. It is evident, that the authors sympathy lies with the children. The
ending of the story reveals the authors social comment about the differences between the world of the
child and adult. Though the Aunt is furious, Nicholas is thinking about the hunter tricking the hounds
by using the stag as a bait. It is a representative of his own life, he is like a hunter able to escape the
hound (which represents his aunt and the dull reality of the adult world) by trickery and strategizing.
To sum up, the authors style is remarkable for its powerful sweep, brilliant illustrations and deep
psychological analysis. The story reveals he authors great knowledge of mans inner world. He
penetrates into the subtlest windings of the child heart. Giving the author his due for brilliance of style
and a pointed ridicule of many social vices, such as snobbishness, pretence, self-interest. The authors
attitude towards grown-ups is a little bit cynical. Its quite obvious that when describing the hard-
heartedness and indifference of Adults world he is not indignant but rather amused. His habitual
attitude is that of expecting little or nothing of his fellow men. His ironical cynicism combined with a
keen wit and power observation affords him effective means of portraying reality without shrinking
before its seamy side. The charm of this story lies in its interesting plot and exciting situation. At the
same time it conveys deep thought, keen observation and sharpness of characterization. These very
qualities assure the author of an outstanding place in the annals of literature and in the hearts of all
who love good stories.