To what extent do you agree with this quote?

Question

In Oscar Wilde's poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol he says:

And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Do you agree on this quote or not? I don't get it. It got me thinking but I don't find an answer.

Answer 1

Here is one person's analysis of the poem:

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,"

Everyone? This SHOULD be quite shocking. Afterall, not everyone kills the thing he loves, do they? According to Wilde, yes they do.

"Some do it with a bitter look,"

This could very easily refer to simply not showing love to the thing you love. How many couples do you know with one bitter party? One part of the couple (typically the gruff old man) who simply does not approve or support anything the other part does? A look can kill.

"Some with a flattering word,"

In my opinion, this is refering to 'players'. Those who trick someone into loving them. The played party will often end up falling in love with the player, but if the player does not love the played, than the love is destined to fail and the played destined to die.

"The coward does it with a kiss,"

This one seems obvious. You can kill the thing you love by kissing, or showing affection to, another thing. This is not necesarily the meaning, however. The line does not distinguish between who is being kissed. It could be the thing you love. One possible meaning could be Judas Iscariot, who betrayed his love(Jesus) with a kiss. Another possibility would be smothering the thing you love too early on with physical affection, essentially killing any chance of real love developing (I have experienced this one!).

"The brave man with a sword!”

This has been taken by some to mean that it is better to kill the one you love than to put them through the pain of killing the love with one of items above. I do not agree with this interpretation. I think it reads more along the lines of; "Some people sabatoge love, they kill it inadvertantly and in a slow and painful manor. But the better man breaks love off in one swift motion." The difference between sabatoging a relationship, thus hurting your partner, and breaking up with someone is huge. I think that the basic idea here is that it is better to break something off yourself than to let your actions do it. Another meaning, if the previous line is meant in a biblical context, would be Peter using a sword to try and save Jesus directly after Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. The use of the sword went directly against Jesus' teachings, and thus could be seen as killing in some manor. Peter was brave, and although he had a brief lapse of cowardice shortly after this incident, he died for his love, hung on a cross upside down (according to scholars of the time and popular belief). Judas, on the other hand, hung himself directly after the events.

http://www.eliteskills.com/c/1370

Here's a synopsis of the story behind the poem, which was written while Wilde was in prison and based on his experiences:

http://drake.marin.k12.ca.us/stuwork/comacad/poets/WILDE/Review3.htm

Answer 2

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RE:
To what extent do you agree with this quote?
In Oscar Wilde's poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol he says:

And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Do you agree on this quote or not? I...

Answer 3

I don't fully agree with this quote. Maybe he means indirectly.

Hmm...
"And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard..."

That DOES get you thinking. It's telling people to become aware of their imperfect desires of the world, what makes everyone make war with eachother. I guess things such as money, or love? I'm not sure...that's my interpretation of it.
"Some do it with a bitter look..."
That line sounds like it has something to do with jealousy (to me).

I'm not sure...I'll be on this question. lol. I want to understand it because I think it's extremely nice. lol. :]

Answer 4

I do agree with this quote.

You have to put it in the context that Wilde was writing it in. His life had collapsed after his lawsuit with the Marquis of Queensberry and, after his release, he imposed a 3 year period of exile on himslef.

Wilde was the one who instigated the lawsuit and therefore contributed to his own downfall - he killed the thing he loved.

The coward doing it with a kiss is an allusion to Judas kissing Christ before his betrayal.

Answer 5

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Answer 6

Yes

Answer 7

While there's some truth in the quote - for all of us do tend to take those they love for granted sometimes, and we don't always treat them as we should - Wilde's making a general, universal statement is far too inclusive.
I think Wilde let too much of his individual, personal experience tempt him into writing that. He wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol after he served a two years sentence in that prison.
"In the summer of 1891, Wilde first met Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of the Marquis of Queensberry and an undergraduate at Oxford. His resulting relationship with Alfred, nicknamed "Bosie", was to alter the course of the rest of his life. Although Douglas later maintained that they had never committed sodomy, whispers were circulating in London Society of Wilde's homosexual tendencies and practices. Over time he had grown increasingly reckless about secretive liaisons with stableboys, clerks and servants, leaving himself open to frequent blackmailing attempts. Oscar was also turning to alcohol and his friends write of often seeing him in an intoxicated state.
He lavished time, attention and money on Bosie in these years during their affair, and although Douglas' father Queensbury developed a violent and irrational hatred for Wilde, Douglas insisted on flaunting the relationship. As Bosie wrote to his mother in 1894: "You cannot do anything against the power of my affection for Oscar Wilde and his for me".
In 1893 Wilde produced A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband, followed in 1894 by The Importance of Being Earnest and the poem The Sphinx. The obsessed Marquis of Queensberry attempted to disrupt the opening night performance of The Importance of Being Earnest, but his plans were found out. Only a few days later, Queensberry left a calling card for Wilde at a London club addressed for "Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite" [sic]. After this and other aggressive acts by the Marquis, spurred on by Bosie yet against the advice of most of his friends, Wilde filed a suit against Queensbury for criminal libel.

Wilde soon found the tables turned upon himself however as he answered charges made against him from an 1885 law which made "homosexual relations between men" illegal. The accusations didn't include Lord Douglas, but rather were based on alleged "acts of gross indecency" with several male prostitutes, with evidence gathered by detectives hired by Queensbury. On May 25, 1895 Oscar Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labor. As a friend of his stated: "I have seen many awful happenings at the Old Bailey, but to me no death sentence has ever seemed so terrible as the one Justice Wills delivered when his duty called upon him to destroy and take from the world the man who had given it so much".

The time spent in jail was the beginning of the end for Wilde. He soon declared bankruptcy and his property was auctioned off. In late 1895, his transfer from Wandsworth to Reading Gaol was to provide a traumatic experience which Wilde later wrote of:
From two o'clock till half past two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform at Clapham Junction in convict dress and handcuffed, for the world to look at.... Of all possible objects I was the most grotesque. When people saw me they laughed. Each train as it came in swelled the audience. Nothing could exceed their amusement.... For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering mob.
It is said that one onlooker, upon recognizing the prisoner as Oscar Wilde stepped up to him and spat in his face. The incident affected Wilde dramatically for years afterwards, as he wept at the same hour every day.
The imprisonment and hard labour consisted of a thirteen by seven foot cell, with planks for a bed, and useless work designed to break the spirit. In 1896 Wilde lost legal custody of his children. When his mother died that same year, his wife Constance visited him at the jail to bring him the news. It was the last time they were to see each other before her death in 1898.
After his release in May of 1897, Wilde immediately moved to France and resumed his relationship with Lord Douglas. In 1898 He published his poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, spurred by his jail time experience of the execution of a prisoner who had slit his wife's throat."

No. we ALL don't kill the thing (person) we love, but some of us do - by a knife or by a bitter word. And while we may not kill the person with a word, we can kill the love.