"5 Ways to Kill a Man" by Edwin Brock

In this poem, "Five Ways to Kill a Man", the poet, Edwin Brock contrasts between the killings of humans at different time periods in the world. The first stanza tells of the executions in the times of Jesus. The second stanza tells of the times when knights used to duel on white horses. The German's deadly chlorine gas attacks from World War I are described in the third stanza. The fourth stanza tells of the …

…writes that "simpler, direct, and much more neat is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century". In the past four types of killings, the man is actually killed. However, in this last stanza, the man is never killed but made to live. This gives me the impression that Brock is humoring the amount of killings that happened in the twentieth century and how quickly and easily they happened.