Short summary "The Man He Killed" by Thomas Hardy

 

"The Man He Killed" was written by the British Victorian poet and novelist Thomas Hardy and first published in 1902.

This poem is a dramatic monologue, the poem's speaker recounts having to kill a man in war with whom he had found himself "face to face." Talking casually throughout, the speaker discusses how this man could easily have been his friend, someone he might have, under different circumstances, had a drink with in an "ancient inn."

Struggling to find a good reason for shooting the man, the speaker says it was "just so"—it was just what happens during war. The poem thus highlights the senselessness and wasteful tragedy of human conflict and is specifically thought to have been inspired by the events of the Boer War in South Africa.

“The Man He Killed” is a dramatic monologue in which the speaker talks about the time he shot and killed a man during a war. Reflecting on the experience, the speaker notes how arbitrary it all seemed; rather than his enemy being someone totally different from the speaker, this other soldier was remarkably similar.

 

Indeed, the speaker imagines he could easily have been friends with this man. The poem, then, argues that war is senseless, tragic, and brutal, and that it ignores the common humanity between people on different sides of a conflict. The poem itself is told as if it is a conversation taking place in a pub (and the poem makes not one but two references to drinking establishments).

The speaker talks unguardedly to the addressee, who could be a friend, the reader, or a combination of both. The poem builds a sense that the speaker is talking to the addressee in the same way he would have talked to the man he killed, had they met in a bar rather than on the battlefield.

 

Effect of war is the major theme of this poem. 

The poem is a criticism of war, and it shows the senselessness of war, where people kill each other for simple reasons or no reason at all. The language is simple and dry, factual, and it is told from a perspective of a man recounting killing another man in war. This man might have been his friend, but in that situation he was his foe and he killed him for some reason, he can’t even surely recount exactly why.

Senselessness and remorse

The poem is told in a simple syntax, as a monologue of a man recounting murdering someone in war. He stumbles on his phrases and sentences while describing the scene and reason for his killing indicating that he might feel remorse for what he’d done, and his awareness of the senselessness of it.

 

Desperation

Towards the end of the poem, the speaker tells us that he was out of work, meaning that he joined the war in desperation, in need. The reason for killing the man is that it was a part of his job, something he was told to do. War takes the most toil on those who lose everything and are in a desperate need to provide for their existence.