The Man He Killed

February 28, 2014

Literary Analysis of “The Man He Killed”

“The Man He Killed” was written by Thomas Hardy in 1902 shortly after the Boer Wars in South Africa. The poem is from the viewpoint of a soldier who is trying to justify killing a man in battle while lamenting that they could have been bar mates. The speaker stutters and repeats himself in a futile effort to find reason in his actions. In the end, the soldier can find no real justification for killing a man who he knew nothing about.

At both the beginning and end of the poem, the soldier indicates that he would rather be drinking with his fellow man than killing him. The poem begins with:

Had he and I met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have sat us down to wet

Right many a nipperkin! (1-4)

This instantly indicates that the speaker enjoys drinking socially. This presents the soldier as someone who enjoys social interaction and camaraderie, not as a hardened career soldier or mindless grunt following orders. These lines also indicate he held no prior grudges or hate towards the man he killed. Indeed, this is confirmed by the end of the poem when the soldier says: “You shoot a fellow down / You’d treat if met where any bar is, / Or help to half-a-crown.” (18-20). The soldier recognizes that the man has done nothing to him and could have been his friend under different circumstances.

        So why did the soldier kill the man? The third stanza dedicates all four lines to explaining that the man was his foe, with the soldier stuttering and basically repeating the same thing over and over. The lines “I shot him dead because - / Because he was my foe” repeats the word ‘because’ to illustrate how the soldier is grasping for justification (9-10). The dash shows that the soldier paused while trying to think of a reason, or to convince himself that the reason is valid. The following lines “Just so: my foe of course he was; / That’s clear enough; although” show that the soldier realizes his assertion that the man was his foe is an obvious but weak justification for killing him (11-12). The soldier did not determine the man was his foe, as the poem indicates that the soldier is only an infantryman who’s superiors decide who is and isn’t foe: “But ranged as infantry, / and staring face to face,” (5-6). Considering this, simply declaring the man as your foe is not a strong justification for killing the man.

        The soldier quickly realizes how weak his justification is, and this is noticeable by how the third stanza is ended with the word ‘although’. This leads to the soldier giving an imaginary identity to the man in stanza four, basically counter-arguing the poor justification presented in the previous stanza. The soldier gives the man an identity that mirrors his own and indicates that the man may have had few alternatives to join the war:

He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,

         Off-hand like — just as I —