The Man He Killed

In the poem, the speaker talks about the soldier he killed. He begins by saying that, if they had met at some ancient inn, he would have shared many drinks with the man. But, since they are both in...

The poem "The Man He Killed" is told to us by an unnamed narrator (a man in a bar) who overhears a one-sided conversation (a kind of dramatic monologue) made by a soldier who killed a man....

In "The Man He Killed," Hardy ponders how strange it is that two men who might otherwise sit down for a drink and a chat will, in the name of war, shoot at one another instead. In the third stanza...

Thomas Hardy is a British writer, and in British English, the word "curious" is more likely to be used to express "strangeness" or "oddness," instead of "the state of wanting to know more," as is...

“The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have set us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot...

In the poem "The Man He Killed," by Thomas Hardy, the speaker speculates about the nature of war. Hardy also explores the role of the enemy. This poem was written in the time of the second Boer...

The first poetic device Hardy uses is rhyme. The scheme is ABAB. The shortness of the lines and the repetitive rhyme scheme gives the poem an easy cadence, making it easy to recite and remember,...

This poem by Thomas Hardy makes fairly clear that the poet thinks war "quaint and curious"—specifically because it seems to be such a stupid and pointless exercise. The speaker in the poem...

This is one of Hardy's many poems concerning war and its various absurdities and tragedies. Here, the poem, told in simple language with an absence of figurative language, narrates to us how...

In Thomas Hardy's poem "The Man He Killed," the speaker provides a first-person account of his feelings about the man he killed when he was a soldier. Hardy places the speaker's words in quotation...

The lines quoted are an example of rhyme. Here, as elsewhere in the poem, Hardy uses a simple ABAB rhyming structure. So "because" rhymes with "was," and "foe" rhymes with "although." Rhyme is used...

The speaker of "The Man He Killed" is a man who is reflecting upon having to kill another man in battle. We learn that he didn't kill a man because he hated him. In fact, he is sure that if the two...

The speaker is more naïve than the poet, Hardy, in this 1902 poem. The speaker, an ordinary Englishman, enlists in the army because he is down on his luck. In battle, he kills a man from the other...

Hardy's poem tells the story of a working class British man who has fought in WW I. The narrator of the poem is describing his rationale for having killed an enemy soldier. He muses aloud about why...

One of the things that stands out clearly about this poem is the way in which Hardy has deliberately crafted a poem that is bare of literary devices and presents us with a very straightforward...