The definition of the word bully is one who is habitually cruel to those smaller or weaker than them, and every single bully imaginable demonstrates those qualities. Throughout history the world has been plagued by the spiteful and hurtful people that bullies are, they have been in poems, my life, and they have even orchestrated some of the most horrible events the world has ever seen.
In the poem “The Hangman,” there is a clear image of a bully present throughout the entire poem, clearly it is the hangman. In the poem the hangman blazes into town and brazenly sets up gallows in the courthouse square, and day by day he picks off the townspeople. Using his ability to instill fear he causes the townspeople to submit to his demands and go silently to their deaths instead of rising up. For example, “He laid his hand on that one's arm and we shrank back in quick alarm. We gave him way, and no one spoke, out of fear of the hangman's cloak.” The hangman frightens the entire town so much that not a single person does a thing to help another towns person when they need them most. In the end the bully does so much damage that an entire town is wiped out just because a bully scared everyone so much they were afraid to stand together, united against a common enemy.
Also, in my life I see bullies roam the halls looking for the small and weak just for a chance to cause them harm. Students will pick on students day after day after day until the students no longer feel the slightest will to fight back. Just as in the poem “The Hangman” day after day the townspeople lost their will to fight back and stand together, day after day they grew more and more submissive. For instance, a bully could everyday at lunch take a fry from another student, the first day the student would protest but days after that they would grow too afraid. The students around are just glad it isn't them even though the bully may eventually come to take their fries, so they don't help the person being bullied. That happens in real life just as it does in the poem, and it doesn't just happen in lunchrooms or in poems either, sometimes bullying happens on a world wide scale.
Before World War II the leader of Germany was the most powerful man in Europe and his name was Hitler. Hitler knew how powerful he was and began to torment the countries around him, he would just waltz into country after country taking them over. Each country that was not taken was just glad it wasn't them, until at one point there were very few countries left to stand up to Hitler leading us into World War II. Although what makes Hitler a bigger bully is what he did to his own people. Hitler in the beginning starting put Jews into ghettos and forced them to live there, later on he put more Jews into ghettos, little by little the Jews were being locked up but they were doing nothing about it. They did nothing about it because Hitler started with just a few and the other Jews were just glad it wasn't them so they did nothing to defend themselves. Then Hitler started on the gypsies a few at a time and the homosexuals a few at a time with the same thing happening to them as it did to the Jews. At the end of the war the bully Hitler had killed millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and millions more allied fighters.
What Hitler did as a bully is take down each group piece by piece picking on each group until they wouldn't fight back and scaring other groups for the exact same thing.
For millions of years bullies have been around and they will be for millions of years later we don't know when they will come or what they will do but we do know this, every single bully uses the same tactics. They will be just like Hitler, lunchroom bullies, or the hangman, and the sooner people realize their tactics and stand together rather than every man for himself the world will be a better place.
