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Overview. "The Man He Killed" dramatizes a battle scene between two men. He deals with an internal struggle as his thoughts are regretful before he even shoots. The narrator muses that, in a different context, he would have befriended the combatant.
The Man He Killed. By Thomas Hardy. "Had he and I but met. By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet. Right many a nipperkin! "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me,
Thomas Hardy wrote poems such as 'The Man He Killed' as a way to express his feelings about the Boer wars which were going on during his time.
"The Man He Killed" was written by the British Victorian poet and novelist Thomas Hardy and first published in 1902. A dramatic monologue, the poem's speaker recounts having to kill a man in war with whom he had found himself "face to face."
"Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place.
The Man He Killed is one of the Hardy’s famous poem that he wrote after the Boer wars. The setting of the poem is a battlefield where the speaker meets an unknown person for the first time and he killed that unknown person because he was his enemy created by the battlefield.
Brief Summary. The poem centres around the speaker’s experience of having to kill a man whilst in combat during The Boer War. The speaker considers how under different circumstances the man he is faced with killing could be a friend.
Thomas Hardy’s “The Man He Killed” (1902) is a scathing indictment of war’s senseless waste. It is addressed to a nation caught up in war fever by a poet uncertain of the purpose of war and uneasy over how completely battlefields dehumanize ordinary people into dispensable objects.
The Man He Killed was written in 1902 at the time of the Second Boer War, fought between the British and the Dutch settlers in South Africa. The aim of the British was to consolidate its Empire...
May 13, 2011 · Read, review and discuss the The Man He Killed poem by Thomas Hardy on Poetry.com.
