Next Section Analysis Previous Section Themes How To Cite in MLA Format Lena, Braga. Will review the submission and either publish your submission or provide feedback. THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL I E did not wear his scarlet coat, For blood and wine are red, And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead, The poor dead woman whom he loved, And murdered in her bed. You can help us out by revising, improving and updatingĪfter you claim a section you’ll have 24 hours to send in a draft. For them, time seems to drag on and stretches to infinity which only amplifies the hardship they have to face. They remained stuck in an endless night where darkness became the only reality they knew and where light and hope didn’t exist. The prison walls influences those who didn’t believe in God to start thinking about him and to start to pray to him.įor those inside the prison, the morning brought no comfort. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), is flawed as a work of art, but gained him much of his notoriety. Inside the prison, a place where there was no hope and where those inside where reminded constantly of the possibility of being hanged, the idea of God and forgiveness becomes the only thing keeping those inside from becoming hopeless. The idea that men find peace in religion and prayer becomes a motif from the beginning of the poem.

The poison inside their body slowly kills them and their guilty conscious produces more pain than any other punishment could. The prisoners are all tormented by the sin they have done, a sin compared with a poisonous sword. Later the poet tells how other men have tormented his inmate in the prison. The poem starts with describing the appearance, emotions, and situation of the prisoner. It portrays the sentence of execution of Wilde’s inmate in the prison. The narrator describes the feeling he and other inmates experience while being in prison. The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde that deals with what he has experienced in prison. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.Īnd as molten lead were the tears we shed These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.

Oscar wilde poem the ballad of