Everyday Canvas

Oscar Wilde and His Disappointment in Love

Prompt: Oscar Wilde says in his The Ballad of the Reading Gaol, “Each man kills the thing he loves.” What do you think he means?

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I tend to believe that love, if true, cannot do nasty things to the beloved.

As to Wilde’s statement and the poem, I think Wilde is hinting at several things:

* A killing may not be physical. We can kill each other with words and gestures and by holding back love and attention.

* Wilde own disappointment in love. Having read what his life had been like, I can understand him.

* Murder that is not always premeditated: Wilde began writing this poem, on the exterior, about a man who had killed his wife. The man took his sentence in a detached fashion and was executed later.

* Harshness of the society that judges and punishes its individuals without understanding. Wilde spent two years in Redding Jail for being a Homosexual. He was deeply humiliated there, not only by the terrible conditions and treatment in jail but also for the society’s scorn upon who he was.

* Scheming love that changes and kills its love object through being control-crazy, as some overly indulgent or controlling parents do.

To wrap it up, I think, while Wilde’s statement sounds powerful, it is also questionable rationally, but then Wilde himself was a paradox and he loved coming up with paradoxical statements. Still, the beauty of usage and the downright feeling and passion in his work cannot be denied to him.