Weibo Yang

Mrs. Hawkins
English 8
15 March 2016
The Hangman
Both the modern world and during the holocaust show that all that is necessary for evil to
triumph is for otherwise good men to do nothing. In the poem, The Hangman, Maurice Ogden
introduces a hangman who comes to hang one person. The hangman is able to kill everybody
because the good men did nothing so the hangman continued to hang people until the whole
town was gone.The hangman continued to hang people no matter who the person was, And so
we ceased, and asked no more, as the hangman tallied his bloody score/ and sun by sun, and
night by night, the gallows grew monstrous height (32-36). The hangman continues to tally his
bloody score day by day because no one chooses to stop him because they are men who are
scared and do not want to be hanged by the hangman. As the townspeople remain silent, the
hangman continues to hang people as the gallows tree grows to symbolize the evil that is
growing in the silent town. In the empty town where everyone is hanged, Beneath the beam
that blocked the sky. None had stood so alone as I. And the Hangman strapped me, and no voice
there Cried Stay! for me in the empty square (108-112). In the end the hangman hanged the
narrator and no one stood up for him because he did not stand up for the other people that were
hung. Beneath the scaffold or tree of all the hanged people that blocked the sky, nobody stood so
alone as he because he was the last one, because he was the most cowardly who did not speak up
for any of the innocent people voice stood up for him in the empty square. If all men do nothing,
then evil will continue to triumph and the silence can eventually start killing everyone. Even

today, Donald Trump stands as a be a perfect example for this issue because in one of the debates
he claimed to ban all Muslims in America and build a wall from the border of Mexico and force
the Hispanic to pay them all. Therefore, even on the outside we humans might appear good, but
in the inside we can be evil and decide not to help other people around us.