by Kerry Michael Wood

Created on: April 28, 2008   Last Updated: March 02, 2012

The senselessness of war is a subject often treated in prose and poetry, but rarely do such treatments employ understatement to dramatize their common theme. In Thomas Hardy's "The Man He Killed," there is no gunfire, no wailing from the wounded, no graphic images of terror, suffering and death. The speaker of Hardy's poem is a simple fellow who will not, like Wilfred Owen, be quoting a Horatian ode to make his point about the irrationality of warfare.

Written in 1902, the poem probably refers to the Boer War. The poet's focus is on war in general rather than a specific conflict. Using the technique of a dramatic monologue, the poem's speaker reveals himself and his confusion by the diction and slang he uses to convey his perplexity.

He is not gifted with language. We see this in line 2 in the common conversational redundancy "old ancient" that he uses to describe a hypothetical inn where he and his victim might have run into one another and socialized. He has to grope for words and repeats himself. He enlisted in the army "off-hand-like" rather than out of some patriotic spirit. He had not been able to find work and had sold the tools of his trade in order to scrape by.

In some battle he killed a man - a mirror image of himself only with a poorer aim or slower trigger finger. Had there been no war, the two might have met at a tavern and gotten acquainted over flagons of ale or, as the speaker puts it, "Wet right many a nipperkin!" (A "nipperkin,"as you probably guessed, is a liquor container of a half-pint or so.) An affable and friendly sort who enjoys a spot of ale or liquor, the speaker can't believe that he has taken the life of an alter ego.

In stanza two we hear language that sounds not like his own but perhaps that of his military instructors or officers. "Ranged as infantry" was not a familiar situation in which to find himself, but he does as instructed. "I shot at him as he at me,/ And killed him in his place." Now, having taken another man's life, he struggles to explain why he did so.

The answer comes after hesitation and puzzlement that is communicated dramatically. "I shot him dead because - / Because he was my foe." Like "ranged" and "infantry," "foe" is not a word that comes naturally to him. His dissatisfaction with that answer can be heard in his repetitions and pauses.

Just so: my foe of course he was; /That's clear enough; although

That "although" dangling at the end of the line and stanza resonates with his confusion. Why was his victim

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