To The Mercy Killers - The Analysis

TO THE MERCY KILLERS  -Dudley Randall-

If ever mercy move you murder me,

I pray you, kindly killers, let me live.

Never conspire with death to set me free,

but let me know such life as pain can give.

Even though I be a clot, an aching clench,

a stub, a stump, a butt, a scap, a knob,

a screaming pain, a putrefying stench,

still let me live, so long as life shall throb.

Even though I seem not human, a mute shelf

of glucose, bottled blood, machinery

to swell the lung and pump the heart—even so,

do not put out my life. Let me still glow.

-Dudley Randall-

A POEM ANALYSIS

Analyzed By Rudi Brata

Title : To The Mercy Killers

By DUDLEY RANDALL

The speaker in this poem is someone who suffers from a disease that can not be cured for a long time but he or she still wants to be alive. However, the speaker is afraid of being a victim of euthanasia. Therefore, the speaker disagrees with the mercy killing or euthanasia to be performed on him or her. Because he or she thinks that it is against the God’s will.  

The central purpose of this poem is to tell the readers that the life and death of human are determined by the God not by someone. The speaker says that life is too precious for him or her even though he or she has a very bad disease. Therefore, the speaker rejects when the someone or the doctor wants to plea a kind of mercy killing or euthanasia to him or her in order to end his or her misery because of the disease he or she has. 

There are five imageries in this poem. They are: auditory, olfactory, visual, organic and kinesthetic. In the first stanza there are some words such as “ throb”, “pain” and the phrase “ set me free” , “to swell the lungs and pump the heart” are categorized as internal sensation or organic imagery. Because those words refer to the feeling from the heart of a person who feels that way. The phrases “a clot”, “an aching clench”, “a stub”, “a stump”, “a butt”, “a scab”, “a knob”, a mute shelf of glucose, “bottled blood” , “kindly killers”, “let me still glow” and the word “machinery” are considered as visual imagery because they give pictures of the state of someone’s condition and the situation in a room. The sentence “If ever mercy move you murder me”, “as long as life shall throb”, “ as beg to die”, “to swell the lungs and pump the heart”,  the phrase “a screaming pain”, “an aching clench”, and the word “pray” are a kind of movement or kinesthetic imagery because those activities need some movements from the parts of our body. However, the phrase “ a screaming pain”, “ as long as life shall throb”, “to swell the lungs and pump the heart” and the word “pray” are categorized as sound or auditory imagery because screaming, praying. throbbing , swelling the lung and pumping the heart can produce sound. The phrase “a putrefying stench” is categorized as sound or smell or olfactory imagery because it describe a very unpleasant smell of a rotten body.

There are two symbols in this poem. They are metaphors and irony. The metaphor symbol refers to the statement,  Then, the phrase “Never conspire with death to set me free”. This statement means that although the speaker’s life has been painful and miserable, he or she doesn’t want to get euthanasia to set him or her free from the misery. After that, the sentences “Even though I be a clot, an aching clench, a stub, a stump, a butt, a scab, a knob, a screaming pain, a putrefying stench, still let me live, so long as life shall throb. Because this portrays the conditions of that sick person that  seem incurable. Then, the examples of irony symbol is from the sentences for example, “ Let me still glow ”. Because this is the ironic statement implying that the speaker still wants to be alive despite his or her hardships and painful misery because of the bad disease he or she has. And the opening of the poem is characterized by a curious ironic choice of words such as“ If ever mercy move you murder me, I pray you, kindly killers, let me live.” These are ironic choices of words because even though the speaker is dying with the incurable disease he or she has, the speaker still hopes and prays in order to let him or her live longer.