The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

The poem’s famous refrain, “each man kills the thing he loves” (1.37,1.53)—is also the central theme. This idea is as challenging as it is memorable. What does Wilde mean when he accuses everybody of killing the thing they love? The condemned man—Charles Thomas Wooldridge—has literally killed his love, murdering his wife in a fit of rage. But not every case is this obvious, as everybody ruins what they love in their own way:

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword! (1.39-42, 6.15-18).

Not only do people kill the thing they love in a variety of ways, they do so at different stages in their lives: “some […] when they are young, / And some when they are old” (1.43-44). They also have different motives, such as “Lust” (1.45) or “Gold” (46). Perhaps most importantly for the narrator, however, not everybody suffers the same punishment for this action. In fact, many do not suffer punishment at all, though it is precisely in that punishment that the poet (and the condemned man) find redemption.

Those who kill the thing they love do not always do so literally. Wilde seems to also have himself in mind when he declares that “each man kills the thing he loves” (1.