In the first part of the ballad the protagonist is introduced, when he was discovered after killing his woman, with bloody hands (1,4). The figure of this man, after being captured, in prison seems to be gay (2,4) but in his eyes the melancholy is clear. The author describes his behaviour in prison and wonders what he has done: something serious or trivial.

The beginning of the poem would be an introduction to the atmosphere of the whole work. In fact to introduce the readers to the terrible situation they will meet in the life in jail, there is a description of an almost macabre scene: the image of a man in a scarlet coat, the same colour as the blood and the vine that were on his hands after having killed the woman he loved. Immediately the characterisation of this man emerges with some description of his actions and his behaviour. The presentation of this character represents all prisoners condemned to die or only to live in the narrow atmosphere of the jail. A condemned (2) has a "light and gay" step because he is conscious of his near future, he knows that he can’t do anything anymore, but at the same time with his "wistful eye" (3) he regrets the daily life with its freedom represented by the "drifting cloud" that goes across the "little tent of blue" that is the sky for the prisoners, the only possible escape for them.

When the narrator knows what the prisoner has done and what will happen to him he begins to think only about the condemned, forgetting his pain (5). The narrator analyses every thought of the man that is going to die according to the human justice (6) because he had killed, physically, the thing he loved. From stanza 7 the narrator begins a more general discussion, saying that all men kill the things they love, but each in a different way. Here we can notice that Wilde didn't mean by "kill" only the physical action, but he wanted to include also the moral or sentimental death. The "bitter look", the "flattering word", the "kiss" are moral or sentimental ways of killing, the use of a "sword" only physical (7). In stanza 8 Wilde continues the same address saying that the man can kill strangling "with the hands of Lust" and "with the hands of Gold" (moral death) and using a "knife" (physical death) (8). In stanza 9, Wilde seems to accuse or only to underline the fact that there is not punishment for the moral crimes. The last two lines "For each man kills the thing he loves / yet each man does not die" are in contrast with the last two ones of stanza 6 "The man had killed the thing he loved / and so he had to die"; in fact in stanza 6 the consequence of "to kill" is "to die", but it is so only for some offences, because in stanza 9 the consequence of "to kill" is "not to die". (9)

The whole speech of Wilde begins from the fact that every man kills the thing he loves and there are two different ways of doing it: one purely physical, connected to the common way of thinking about a murder, the second is a moral and sentimental way and we know, from experience, that this is the most diffused one. Wilde perceives the fact that there is not punishment in human society for moral crimes and so he begins a description of the sufferings that these "criminals" do not bear, but that are typical only of the men that have killed physically. But starting from the consciousness of the absence of moral punishment, he would arrive at a theological and religious conclusion, because if there is justice, before or then, the punishment has to come, if not on Earth perhaps in another place.

In stanzas 10, 11, 12 Wilde starts the description of a lot of actions that the prisoners have to do differently from free people. He describes how some men haven’t the typical characteristics of the ones who are going to die soon. Wilde describes (12) some men who won’t see the "Chaplain" in their room in the day of the execution, or won’t see the Sheriff or the Governor.

In stanza 13 Wilde is narrating the conditions of the prisoners and we can find, again, the difference between the men that kill morally from the people that kill physically, in fact in this five stanzas there is the description of all the actions that the condemned to death does: when he rises and puts on the "convict-clothes", when he’s waiting for the hangman and he has a "sickening thirst", when he hears the "Burial Office", or when he stays upon the air and he "does not pray". He seems a resigned man who knows his destiny and he’s waiting for the execution. In this part Wilde underlines the situation of the prisoners, in fact he says that the people who kill morally a man don’t feel all the strange and macabre sensations that the condemned to death feels. We can see this part as a critical comment of Wilde on the British society where a person who kills morally a man isn’t punished while a man who kills physically a person is condemned to death as in this ballad.

From stanza 9 to 16, Wilde, describing the conditions of the prisoners in jail, wants to criticise how the contemporary society of the poet used to treat those prisoners. An important point is the atmosphere that’s present since the very beginning; it’s described as dark, frightening, sad and miserable in order to underline that situation and to move the sympathy of the reader toward the prisoners. The figures of the Chaplain, the Governor, who’s dressed in black and personifies the figure of the punisher, the Sheriff, described as stern and gloom, and finally the Hangman, who with his gardener gloves has three leathern thongs, and always ready to kill the condemned in every moment. Wilde uses the negative form in order to present all those things that will happen to the condemned prisoner but that will never happen to the other people who had killed just morally the thing they loved.

At the beginning of the second part of the ballad there is a first person narrator who describes the behaviour of a prisoner who is going "to swing"; sometimes the point of view is generalised and becomes the one of all the prisoners who see the man walk on the apposite ring (stanza 18, line 1).

The prisoner seems to be completely resigned in front of death and aware of what is going to happen to him, but at the same time he doesn't lose the occasion to appreciate the last pleasant moments that remain to him. In his movements he doesn't look like all the other convicts (stanza 19: the narrator says that the prisoner apparently was not nervous and didn't wring his hands like the men who had been in his situation).

In the text there are many references to elements of nature like the sun, the sky and the air and we can notice how the convict pauses to look at them and to "breathe" them (stanza 18: the voice of the ballad says that the look at the sky of the prisoner who is going to be hanged, is wistful and different from all the other prisoners' looks). (Stanza 20: instead of crying and pining the man "drank" the air and the sun). On one side there is the convict who, in spite of the moment, appears very normal in his behaviour; on the other side there are the other prisoners who look at him and are very amazed and almost astonished (stanza 22: it was strange for the other prisoners to see that man walking light and gay and think that he was going to be executed) (stanza 21: the other prisoners looked at the man with surprise and forgot if they had committed a little or a great thing.).

In these stanzas the condemned is locked up in a confinement cell and the prisoners know that they won’t see him again. Wilde describes the last day of the condemned before the execution and the hard conditions of work of the other prisoners.

To the dark description of the atmosphere, that characterised the jail of Reading, contribute the many elements joined to the idea of death. One of these that more obsesses Wilde is the gallows, which appears in stanza 23; the gallows is identified as a tree that contrasts with the blossom of the trees during the spring. "The gallows-tree" is terrible because his blossom involves the death of a man. The tone is dramatic but we can find sarcastic interventions like for example in stanza 25, in which the image of the hanging appears. The swinging of the hanged man is compared to a dance: "It is sweet to dance to violins… but it is not sweet with nimble feet to dance upon the air".

In stanza 27 Wilde, because he does not see the condemned any more, thinks that he is dead and that he cannot see him again. So he regrets he hasn’t ever had any dialogue, any relationship with the man. In the following stanza (28) the lack of relation with the condemned is represented by means of a simile: "like two doomed ships that pass in the storm". The fault of their non-dialogue is the place in the situation "not in the holy night, but in the shameful day". Wilde establishes a parallelism between the two men, which are shown as two sinners expelled by the world and forgotten by God. The image of God recurs many times in the Ballad, but it is always a something projected outside the walls. Although the prisoners haven’t lost their faith in God, they can’t wish in his forgiveness or in the absolution of their sins (28,29).

Another image that disturbs the soul of Wilde is the "yellow hole", awaiting the body of the condemned; the open grave is personified as a monstrous creature, thirsty of blood and ready to swallow with "yawning mouth" the condemned. This macabre sign that represents the imminent death of the condemned takes away from the mind of the prisoners their tragic destiny, that has been temporarily forgotten. The absurdity of this oblivion is for the fact that during the day, the hard work becomes the only activity that involves them so much, from a physical point of view, and that isolates them totally from a material one, completing the degradation of their personality.

In the ballad a true contrast between day and night is created and also between how these are lived in prison. While during the day, what provokes the anguish of the prisoners is the material weight for the hard conditions of work, the night is the only moment in which the loneliness and the inactivity permits an interior meditation that gives free vent to the prayers, reflections and fears. Wilde analyses the hard conditions of work in stanzas 37-38 using a list of actions: "…We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors and cleaned the shining rails … We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones…"

This technique permits to the writer to give the impression of the continuity of the physical actions that don’t give vent to feelings.

An example of how a night, spent in the isolation of a cell, can be transformed into a torment is shown in stanza 42, where the anguish felt is much greater than usually, because it assails the prisoners exactly the night before the death of one of them. The idea of the execution and the constant sensation of being persecuted prevents their sleep and provokes "forms of fear" that make themselves real in inaudible sounds ("stole feet we could not hear") and in visions ("white faces seemed to peer"). The presence of the supernatural will be more evident in the rest of the poem, where evil spirits will terrorise and will mock the convicts. There are recurrent materials that underline the hardness of the prison and of the constriction to which the prisoners are subordinated (of iron, of steel, of stone). The late lines of stanza 42 can recall Blake in his poem "London", in which wandering through the city, that seems almost like a prison, the speaker hears "the mind forg’d manacles". In fact the mind of the man creates restrictions which oppress him and his feelings, just as manacles and bars limit the freedom. The freedom is like something extraneous and far away and is often felt through natural elements, like the sun, the stars or flowers. In the last but one line the bars obstruct the sight of the stars and so the man prevents the freedom and especially the nature, like probably the society tries to do to Wilde, his free way of being and the nature of his feelings.

The worried sleep of the prisoners, described in this stanza, is in contrast with the quiet sleep of the condemned in the following stanza (43): here the guards aren’t able to understand that the uncertainty for the destiny and the distance from the end of this agony make the souls of the prisoners suffer more than the condemned one, who looks at the near death, as a sort of liberation.

Wilde puts in evidence as in Reading prison the hopes, given by the faith in God, and the human pity cannot exist: in a "Murderers’ hole" any word, that he calls "word of grace", or act of comfort could alleviate the anguish of the prisoner, that Wilde calls "brother", because all the men in prison are united by the same destiny.

In this place of suffering, because of their strong condition of life, due to the hard labour, and also of expiation are absent manifestations of affection and any type of bond and of feeling between the prisoners.

In stanza 44 there’s a high component of solidarity between prisoners; their pain, their terror are shared between themselves and unite them as if they were one only man. Wilde defines them "fool, fraud and knave" but this is only the name given them by society, because, in this extract, they look like undefended and impotent (characteristics made more explicit in the next stanzas in which prisoners are weeping and praying) in front of the reality, but strong thanks to the unity achieved during the "endless vigil". This picture Wilde shows us is opposed to the presentation of the convict, who (in stanza 43) sleeps and dreams so quietly even if a hangman is metaphorically near him. So while the man, who is going to die, sleeps in "a pleasant meadow-land" the fools do an endless vigil, being not able to go to bed.

Prisoners feel themselves fraternised, having also the sensation to "feel another’s guilt"; so the personification of the sin (with the image of the Sword of Sin), lets us be more conscious of the sentiments they have: melancholy and absolute sadness. Wilde and his friends get estranged from their own bodies, they are distant from that place but near to each other; their tears are too heavy, and they feel guilty "for the blood we had not spilt".

This strange behaviour is not understood by the warders, who see prisoners totally different from other situations; they realise that also cruel men can be redeemed and prayer is the symbol of this change. The description of the watchers returns (after stanza 43, where they look at the condemned man with incredulity), and their feelings are the same in the two different stanzas: astonishment.

It’s important to underline the contrast of the figure of "padlocked door" with the alienation of men who, even if they had never prayed, can feel free for a few moments with the prayers they offer to the dead man (and in general to all suffering men).

In the stanza 47 we can see prisoners who, like children, cry, praying for a man like them, with the only exception that he’s dead.

Here an analogy with the Holy Bible appears: "bitter wine upon a sponge" is the smell they associate with Remorse (remorse which probably came from the fact of having permitted the homicide of a prisoner, a guilt not given to the prisoners but to the society, which let the death penalty be legal). In the Bible the bitter wine is offered to Jesus, and probably Wilde tries, in a tragic situation, to compare God’s son with the soul of all men, who felt sad for the prisoner’s death.

Wilde describes the actions of the spirits who have to take a dead man away. They come in a dance of Fear "with mop and mow" singing in order to wake the dead. These stanzas are full of supernatural events that come from the idea of Death. In this ghostly atmosphere the main characters are the phantoms, fearful shapes that give the impression of playing a game in which they establish the rules. The time seems to be motionless, stopped ("but never came the day"), in order to create a terrible atmosphere marked by the movements of the spirits.

In the stanzas from 52 to 55 there is the representation of the spirits acting like human beings (personified): they speak, they dance, they are in chains but they can move their feet; there is a funny and happy background in the first three stanzas, like a sort of party, while in the fourth the night falls and the scene turns into a world of darkness and fear. Even if this has to be considered as a part of transition, when nothing much is said about the protagonist, stanza 52 is the most significant of all, because it takes the reader into the world of the fantastic and of the supernatural that has got the function of background to the story.

In stanzas 53 and 54 the spirits are shown while they dance in groups, they move at random here and there and the function of them is clearly made explicit in the last couple of lines of stanza 54: they help the prisoners pray.

In stanza 55 the concept of the prayer is taken again and there is a very important thing to notice: as the prisoners know that the sun will rise every day at dawn, they know the same way that one of them is going to be executed ("Justice of the Sun") so they are full of fear and pain.

Stanza 56 says that the prisoners, after a night spent in prayer, in the early morning find a wind that wanders around the prison-wall. Wilde calls it "weeping prison-wall" because it keeps imprisoned many people rich of sorrow who hope, one day, to be free. The life of the prisoners is so insignificant that they have the impression of feeling the minutes crawl, like a wheel of turning steel. Then Oscar Wilde, referring to the wind, asks what they had done to deserve that destiny.

In stanza 57 the author writes in first person and he says that he sees the shadow of the bars moving right across the wall in front of his bed. He also compares the shadow of the bars with a lattice, and to emphasise his bad living condition he says that his bed is made of only three planks. From the sight of the shadow, he also understands that somewhere in the world God’s dreadful dawn is red, and more precisely, he is sure that a better condition, made of freedom, joy and happiness can be found outside the prison walls.

In stanza 58 he says that, even if the prisoners cleaned their cells, the atmosphere is not good because that day a prisoner was going to be executed: "The Lord of Death had entered in to kill". Then Oscar Wilde says that the Lord of Death doesn’t ride a moon-white steed and more concretely he also explains that the only important things to execute a prisoner are three yards of cord and a sliding board. To demonstrate all his scorn against the death penalty he calls the cord "rope of shame".

Waiting for the execution, Wilde reflects on the loss of hope by the prisoners. The personification of Hope is made up by the use of a strong and emblematic position of the word itself. The situation prisoners are living in has stolen something from the soul of all of them: the simple appearing of the executioner kills their hope in Justice. Wilde criticises not only it (Justice is considered, in a sort of paradox, daughter of men because without them it won’t be, for this reason it commits a "monstruous parricide" and at the same time the poet underlines how it is abstract because it goes on independently from men), but also the society: the killing of a man is something out of control, irrational while a mortal crime committed by the State in whose name Justice works could not be possible in a democratic society. A new consideration is about the fact that "for Man’s grim Justice goes it way, / and will not swerve aside". Its indifference hits "the weak" and "the strong" at the same time. The executioner is the symbol of fate, the same one represented by time: "will use a running noose / for the best and the worst".

The passing of time is one of the most important elements of this passage: the passing time underlines not only the upset state of prisoners but also the sorrow of the waiting for death. Stroke is the only sound that is listened to. Silence is symbolic of the impossibility of action by men. They feel themselves useless in relation with the hanging. This is evident in a simile: "like things of stone in a valley lone". After the great waiting, they hear the sound of the prison clock. A new personification is given: "...the prison clock / smote on the shivering air". Time is also the stroke of Fate. Silence is interrupted by a scream, representation of "impotent despair". After the hanging, time becomes a sort of consolation: at noon prisoners are left free, so they could express their feelings.

Before the hanging, the simple preparation of the means of death gives horror to everyone. The man dies praying. Only Wilde could understand "all the woe that moved him so / that he gives that bitter cry, / and the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats". The poet in fact identifies himself with the characters of his works; for this reason he lives not only many lives but also many deaths. This is said in a paradox: "for he who live more lives than one / more deaths than one must die".

The description of the prisoners considerations about men’s woe goes on: religion could not be a means of consolation: "there is no chapel on the day / on which they hang a man", in this way begins stanza 67, that is an important point of the poem because of its reflections about religion and faith. The anguish of the Chaplain himself is described ("the chaplain’s heart is far too sick / or his face is far too wan"); he is the representative of the religious sense of pity and pardon. Elements that are not taken into consideration in the society’s attitude that Wilde is describing. This is based on immorality but this is masked under a rigorous appearance of honesty (this double aspect is present also in "The Importance of Being Earnest"). The chaplain is also the prisoners’ confessor and knows not only their feelings but also their terrible secrets ("...there is that written in his eyes / which none should look upon"). He is the symbol of religious impossibility to give redemption to these men: they were condemned not only by Justice but also by people. Wilde is fighting against this individual attitude. If in society could condemn a person, the single person can’t judge another man, because, singularly taken, every man makes mistakes. This idea comes out also of the Holy Bible.

Wilde reflects about what the feelings of prisoners are. They feel alone, even if they are many. Everyone feels isolated in his "separate Hell". This is a particular mental state in which a prisoner has to face his punishment in loneliness. The idea is that all of them have committed similar crimes but we could think of them as if they were different; in fact not only the person that committed it changes, but also the circumstances and the psychological state in the moment of the crime. In this sense only one will be the punishment, but this is lived in a different private anguish. To describe this particular attitude, the poet talks about "listening cell", to underline, with the use of these key words, the anxiety of prisoners. Interesting is the contrast between the static atmosphere that anticipates the temporary freedom of the prisoners and the movement of the second part, a sort of mental liberation.

Prisoners do not change their mood, even when they are outside their cells; anguish and suffering characterise stanzas 68 / 69 ("I never saw sad men who looked / so wistfully at the day").

Then the author considers freedom and its meaning: that they miss it, is represented by the vision of the sky; freedom is denied to them and for this reason the sky itself reminds them of their destiny. Their punishment consists also in looking at that "tent of blue" in a hopeless way. This passage is the same used in stanza 18 ("Upon that little tent of blue / Which prisoners call the sky") but here the meaning is changed with the change of situation. Prisoners think of freedom as a senseless thing, because they have lost the Hope to be forgiven.

In stanza 71 Wilde resumes the description of the prisoners’ feelings, talking about their faults, about the fact that they were guilty of a mistake. Someone believes that they should have died and not the other man: in fact in this part a new paradox is introduced. As the one of the justice, present about ten stanzas before, in which it is presented as the daughter of men, in these stanzas Wilde writes:

"They should have died instead: / he had but killed a thing that lived, / whilst they had killed the dead". This is a typical paradox used by Wilde to express his opinion. The author’s thoughts are evident in stanza 72, because he is more explicit and expresses a strong idea: all men have committed a crime, a concrete one or an abstract one (against morality), and so all are killers. Wilde uses the image of blood to represent in a more crude and gloomy way the sin that these men have committed against the dead soul. Wilde underlines the fact that a man that has killed another man is in fault but, at the same time, a man that sins in an immoral way is even more unjust, because this man "makes it bleed in vain!", in fact he doesn’t feel remorse.

Then there is a scene in which prisoners walking in the yard remain in silence, closed in their pain. This theme is constantly very present in the ballad. The continuous repetition of the word silence is used to reinforce the idea of the passing of the time (e.g. stanzas 73 /74) but it is also used to underline their feelings of impossibility of action and of speaking.

With the loss of Hope men aren’t able to pray ("we did not dare to breathe a prayer"). In this way Wilde is accusing the Christian society not to give men who have made a mistake, another chance. Not even the last prayer of a man, who is waiting for the hanging, appears to have understood his past errors, is respected by "the Lord of Death": "and heard the prayer the hangman’s snare / strangled into a scream".

Memory of dreadful things and the horror steal from them the possibility of talking but not their horrible thoughts.

From stanza 75, the poet concentrates on what happens to the dead body of the condemned and on religious practices of burial. The tone is quite different: we can find many gothic and Romantic elements in the text: as in Wordsworth’s pantheism, man and nature become fused through participation in the one "mighty being", so that the most elemental natural objects become "humanised". There is also correspondence between human feelings and landscape.

The warders arrive walking hard, watching the prisoners like "herd of brutes"; they are wearing their Sunday clean uniforms but prisoners understand that they come from the burial ground of the prison yard by the traces of "quicklime on their boots". Their features are in contrast with what they have done.

Wilde describe in a hard and cruel tone what sort of burial has been given to the dead man, this would be the symbol of the sense of contempt that society has towards prisoners: the grave is a mass of "mud and sand" as a new prison wall and the "pall" is a little mountain of lime. The unhappy man stays there, naked with fetters on each foot and he can’t claim a pall because he is alone "deep down below the prison-yard". He feels wrapped in a sheet of flame. The burning lime destroys his body ("the soft flesh and the brittle bones"). This is symbolic of how the society does not forgive crime even after the death of the person that was condemned, according to Justice that person doesn’t deserve respect. In a prison not only the body dies but also the heart is sad.

Stanza 79 deals with the condition of the place where the murderer will be buried. Wilde wants to show the hard rules about the burying of the prisoners, so he tells that the "unblessed spot", the cursed place where the corpse will lay will be sterile and bare, without any flower or seeding. This is the punishment for their crimes and seems the only way to show the world he had sinned. In the last two lines we can find a dramatisation of the spot and the sky, in fact the spot will look at the sky as he didn’t understand the fact that he’s got to be sterile for all that period.

In stanza 80 Wilde goes on explaining the reason why there must not be any seeding in that place, he tells that they, referring to judges, think that the guilty heart of the murderer will taint each seed they sow. Then he gives his personal opinion and explains that the kindness of God is kinder and he can forgive everything. Here we can find a big accusation to men’s juridical system, because it is as if men wanted to judge other men as if they were God, this is opposite to all rules of religion. Wilde justifies this by saying that the roses will be even more coloured if sowed in that place, so nature and God wouldn’t be against the sowing.

The first two lines of stanza 81 describe the purity of murderer’s heart and mouth, the rose out of his heart will be white to show his innocence and out of his mouth a red rose to show the passion of his words. Then he keeps on saying that men don’t know the true plans of God and it is possible that the less important men among all humanity will be the most important for God, he gives an example of the pilgrim and Pope.

In stanza 82, Wilde criticise the life in prison and the prison itself; he refuses to consider this place as a product of God, it is in opposition with nature and the world outside; to show that, the writer says that there will be no flower or seeding that may bloom in prison, but there will be only "shard and pebble", all things that show the future death of the prisoners. They are already dead, Wilde wants to show that the prisoners aren’t dead when they are killed on the gallows’s pole, but they die when they enter the prison walls. He ends by saying that a flower can heal every man, the prisoners too, but flowers may not "bloom in prison air".

In stanza 84 the speaker says that also after his death the prisoner is closed by the walls of the prison. Now he is a spirit but he can’t walk free because he is oppressed by bonds that represent the negative judgement of the people about him. So now he can only cry because he has to lie forever in an unconsacrated ground. In this stanza we can find an anaphora between the three and five that is used to underline the fact that even if he is a spirit he is still considered guilty. There is also a rhyme between "round", "bound" and "ground" that scans the rhythm.

In stanza 85 the spirit feels at peace because even if he is considered guilty by the society he had the pardon of God. In fact before dying he had prayed God; so nothing can scare him because earth defends him. This stanza is less pessimistic because the spirit, helped by God, could consider himself really free.

In stanza 86 the narrator returns to negative and pessimistic themes. He compares the killing of the prisoner with the death of an animal and also the burial is a beastly one. Here to reinforce the meaning the repetition of the term "hanged" is used. The society is defined a Christian one but it doesn’t respect a Christian man; here there aren’t the simple symbols of a Christian burial in fact they didn’t even play a requiem for him. The prisoner is not considered a man and so they don’t bury him as a human being but they put him in a hole and the warders laugh at his body.

In stanzas 86 and 87 we can notice the criticism for the behaviour of the warders and the society, that goes on in the following stanzas.

In stanza 88 Wilde underlines the fact that the Chaplain doesn’t do his work as in other stanzas, for example, he doesn’t heal the soul of the prisoners (stanza 12), he’s described as insensitive and is associated with the institution’s representants (Chaplain, Sheriff and Governor); while in stanza 32 is associated to the Governor and the Doctor. Prisoners are considered as beasts, they aren’t blessed as Christ did with other people. In stanza 89 the theme of Pity is important; man cries and his tears are filled in an urn; as in stanza 35 also here is underlined the fact that Pity, pent up in Murderers’ hole, shouldn’t do anything (not comfort, console…). While in this stanza this urn is broken and so it means that in the world there isn’t pity.

From stanza 90 there is a change of theme: Wilde analyses the English law.

In stanza 90 he doesn’t analyse the legal system; he doesn’t know if laws are right or wrong, but he underlines the time that never passes in prison and "each day is like a year, a year whose days are long". In stanza 91 he uses metaphors to express the fact that in prison with a fan they don’t preserve the best part of a man ("wheat") while they preserve the bad ones of prisoner: and so prisoners become insensitive and their hope is not to die but to obtain a little punishment. In stanza 92 he analyses the theme of shame. Prison is built with bricks of shame (for "death of shame" -stanza 10-), ("shameful day" -stanza 28-), (prison as a secret "House of Shame" -stanza 52-), and the bars are used to hide from Christ what happens in prison; their function is not to let the prisoners see the sky and the stars.

In stanza 93 the bad conditions in which prisoners live are underlined with a beautiful image. The image is that of the bars at the windows that hide the sun and the moon to the sight of the prisoners who live in complete darkness; a darkness that is not only physical but also moral. The bad things that happen inside the prison must be hidden from all, also from the son of God. Stanza 94 begins with a distinction between the things that grow in prison and the things that die. Here only the vilest actions live while what is good in men is destined to die. This stanza ends with another beautiful image where there is a personification of anguish and of despair: one keeps the heavy gate the other one is the warden. In stanza 95 the most important line that explains all of it, is "some grow mad, and all grow bad, and none a word may say". Here Wilde continues to underline the bad conditions in which they live, describing some bad actions done against not normal people. In stanza 96: Wilde leaves the criticism against the action to concentrate on the criticism against the place in which they live: the cell. Cells are very small and dark. It ends with a sentence about Humanity’s machine where all is turned to dust except Lust. Stanza 97: there is yet another criticism, but this time is against the water and bread that are given to prisoners. There is also another personification of Sleep that won’t lie down but walks wild-eyed and cries to Time.

In the next stanzas the main theme is the loneliness which kills the prisoner’s soul, now used to suffering. In stanza 98 we can find a personification of Hunger and Thirst that are compared to two asps which fight each other but in relationship with the loneliness they aren’t important in the sense that in the prison the man suffers because nobody thinks of them who are abandoned to their faith. The terrible thing that kills the heart of the prisoners is the fact that during the day they work and don’t think about the suffering, but during the night they think about their bad conditions.

In stanza 99 there is the poor condition of the prisoners that suffer more because of the loneliness than for the other tortures. This solitude is represented on the dark background that gets in the heart of the prisoners and that changes the behaviour of the man who seems a Hell’s character: in fact the prison is compared to the hell where all men are kept separate and silence is fearful.

In stanza 100 the image of solitude is harder. In fact Wilde says that all the prisoners have never listened to a human sweet voice to comfort their ill heart but they are always seen with cruel eyes by all and so they are abandoned to themselves, so that in a short time they "rot with soul and body marred".

The destiny of the prisoners is represented in the cell (stanza 101) where they must rust, without anything that cheers them up and gives them a little hope to resist the cruel life that they are living. The desperation is represented by three main verbs: "curse", "weep", "moan". In the final lines prisoners ask pardon to God and they think of him to tolerate the hard life they spent in prison.

In following four stanzas the main theme is the religion, the Christian religion, in fact there are some references to the Bible, precisely to the gospels: for example in stanza 102. Here there is the cure that Christ did to a leper. In fact a stone heart that is broken is compared to a box that reveals a treasure. Wilde with this simile explain the fact that prisoners can find God only through suffering, and if it happens it is like a miracle, the inner peace of the man is like scent that lets them feel better.

In stanza 103 Wilde underlines the fact that only a person that breaks his heart, rather than who meditates and who reads the Law of God, can receive the pardon. In stanza 104, there is the other reference to the Bible; the prisoner waits for the Lord to comes to take him to Paradise, the same Lord who takes the Thief. Maybe the Thief is written with the capital letter because he represents all the criminals, all who are in gaol, but also, as Wilde would teach us, all people because everybody sins, everybody kills something. Paradise represents the place in which the prisoners could be at peace. In stanza 105 the speaker condemns again the justice which is opposed to God’s law. The man in red, the judge, gives only three weeks of life to the prisoner in which he must repent. The laws that apply also to the people who have repented, are opposed to the eternal law (previous stanza), and in fact Christ accepted to pardon a sinner for the fact that he repented. In the final part of this stanza returns the theme of blood, which is the sign of the murder, or of the sin. In this stanza there is a "synecdoche", for the fact that the judge is indicated with his red clothes (the part for the whole). There are some repetitions to make the meaning stronger.

In stanza 106 Wilde points out the repentance of the prisoner; the tears and the blood are the symbols of this repentance: the blood, in fact, clean the marks of his sin and so "Cain became Christ’s snow-white seal". Therefore there is a sort of physical expiation, while the tears, which can heal represent psychological repentance.

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The complete text of the "Ballad of the Reading Gaol";
The comparision with the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner";
About Oscar Wilde; A map of the town of Reading; Oscar Wilde Web resources.