After reading the poem "The Hangman", by Maurice Ogden, we can answer the questions:
1. The Hangman built the gallows to hang the townspeople in front of the courthouse.
2. The townspeople wondered who the Hangman would kill. He told them he would kill someone who "served [him] the best."
3. The Hangman hanged first a man who was from another land, not from that town.
4. The townspeople asked him if he had not killed the foreigner the day before. In other words, they wondered why he was still there. I believe the Hangman had not left because he intended, all along, to kill the others.
5. The one who spoke out against the Hangman was hanged by him.
6. The third person was a Jew. The townspeople ask him if that was the man who served him well. The fourth executed was a black man.
7. The townspeople stop asking questions and reacting to the killings. I believe they are feeling both afraid and confused, because the Hangman does not answer their questions directly and never leaves.
8. The speaker thinks the Hangman called him to help pull down the gallows.
9. The Hangman really called him with the intention of hanging him. When the speaker accuses the Hangman of having lied, the Hangman asks who has served him more faithfully than the speaker.
- The poem "The Hangman" by Maurice Ogden is a narrative poem from a first-person perspective.
- The poem criticizes people and government's inertia in the face of injustice and cruelty. Many interpret the poem as a criticism to the world's reaction to Nazism.
- The first people hanged by the Hangman are precisely those he knows no one will defend: a stranger, a Jew, a black man.
- People do nothing about it. As long as it does not happen to them, they do not care about the suffering of others.
- Finally, the Hangman begins to hang everyone. Now, his excuse for killing them is precisely the fact that they did not help the others.
- In conclusion, the poem is a fierce critique against violence, injustice, and inertia.
Learn more about the poem here:
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