This highly structured but dark writing pattern resembled life in a prison. Justice is a hidden theme in “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”. Some argue that this was the main reason Wilde wrote the poem in the first place. Wilde was sent to prison by the laws of men in the name of justice. Yet men who had no moral sense of justice were tasked with serving his sentence. This tone of resentment is very evident in the poem: For man's grim justice goes his way and will not swerve sideways: kills the weak, kills the weak.