History Literature / TheHangman

* RewardedAsATraitorDeserves: [[spoiler: The narrator's ultimate fate is to swing on the gallows for aiding and abetting The Hangman]].

* TooDumbToLive: [[spoiler: When The Hangman calls the narrator over to the gallows, the narrator assumes it's to help take it down since everyone else is dead. He never even considers the possibility that he'll be hanged until he's caught in a trap.]]

--> [[spoiler:Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye. "Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.]]\\
[[spoiler:For I answered straight and I told you true: the scaffold was raised for none but you.]]\\
[[spoiler:For who has served more faithfully than you with your coward's hope?" said he.]]\\
[[spoiler:"And where are the others that might have stood side by side in the common good?"]]\\
[[spoiler:"Dead," I whispered; and amiably, "Murdered," the Hangman corrected me.]]\\
[[spoiler:"First the alien, then the Jew...I did no more than you let me do."]]

* {{Allegory}}: The entire poem is one to UsefulNotes/NaziGermany and its atrocities, and finds its parallel in Niemoller's poem "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came First They Came...]]"

* ExactWords: A variant, in that the Hangman's works are quite clear, but not understood.

''The Hangman'' is a moderately long allegorical poem by Maurice Ogden, concerning an ordinary town to which comes the Hangman. He raises a scaffold, tells everyone that he is here to hang the one who "serves him most faithfully", before beginning to hang people, one by one, day by day, until only the narrator remains. In 1964, the poem was adapted into a short film by Les Goldman and Paul Julian, which can be seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRDq7aneXnk here.]]

!! The Hangman provides examples of:

* {{Allegory}}: The entire poem is one to UsefulNotes/NaziGermany and its atrocities, and finds its parallel in Niemoller's poem, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came First They Came...]]
* AnimatedAdaptation: As linked to above.

''The Hangman'' is a moderately long allegorical poem by Maurice Ogden, concerning an ordinary town to which comes the Hangman. He raises a scaffold, tells everyone that he is here to hang the one who "serves him most faithfully", before beginning to hang people, one by one, day by day, until only the narrator remains. It has been adapted into a short film, which can be seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRDq7aneXnk here]].