The Man He Killed -Thomas Hardy

The Man He Killed

By Thomas Hardy

In his poetry, Thomas Hardy often protested man’s inhumanity to man. As a strong opponent to the Boer War, in which the British fought the Boers for the control of South Africa, Hardy wrote his poem, “The Man He Killed.” Hardy reveals the reality that soldiers in wars often merely carry out orders of their leaders without understanding the motives of war.
This poem focuses on the role of random fate in the lives of two young soldiers as they meet each other in battle. The speaker reflects on the fact that if he and the soldier he kills had only met earlier in a pub, they might have been friends and shared a beer. He then goes on to convince himself that because they were both in the infantry, he had to shoot him “Because he was my foe” (10). Even as he rationalizes with himself, his words prove unconvincing. He then wonders to himself why his enemy joined the army and if it was for the same reason as his own. He imagines that neither of them had any solid reason to join the war other than being out of work and needing the salary. In this poem, Hardy captures the irony of the fact that most soldiers do not join the army for lofty patriotic purposes, but rather out of the impulse of personal need. By focusing on the meaningless of this soldier’s death, Hardy reiterates the absurdity and senselessness of war.
Throughout the poem, Hardy uses literary devices of irony, repetition, and imagery. When the young soldier kills his enemy, he ironically realizes that his enemy might have been his friend and might have had no other reason the join the war than he did. Hardy uses repetition in the lines such as: “face to face”; “I shot at him” and “I shot him dead”; “you shoot a fellow down”; “he was my foe” and “my foe of course he was” to emphasize how the soldiers trying the persuade himself that what he did was right. Finally, Hardy uses the image of an “ancient inn” and a “nipperkin” and a “bar” and “half a crown” as a contrast to his images of war. These images symbolize civilized conversations between friends contrasted with confronting each other in a battle field.
With this short poignant poem, Hardy protests war by putting a human face on it.