The Hangman (poem)
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"The Hangman" is a children’s poem by Maurice Ogden. Its first line is “Into our town the hangman came”.
The poem contains four-line stanzas with rhyming pattern AABB.
Its plot concerns a hangman who arrives at a town and executes the citizens one by one. As each citizen is executed, the others are afraid to object out of fear that they will be next. Finally there is nobody remaining in the town except the Hangman and the narrator of the poem.
The poem can be seen as an indictment of those who stand idly by while others commit grave evil or injustice, such as The Holocaust or McCarthyism.
In 1964 an animated 12-minute film was made by Les Goldman and Paul Julian. Herschel Bernardi narrated. The film was a co-winner of the Silver Sail award at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1964.
