This document goes into detail with Thomas Hardy’s poem: the man he killed. It talks about the content, the language and structure devices used and also the context. There a few important short quotes that have been annotated, and there is explanations and justifications to why Hardy has done cer...
Content:
The speaker is reflecting on the fact that he killed someone. There is also some
mental conflict shown in the poem where the speaker is trying to justify why he
killed the other soldier.
Language:
Semantic field of war
“Infantry”
“Shot”
“Killed”
“Foe”
“List”
The continual use of words that relate to war begins to give the reader a clear
image of what war was like. It gives the reader an insight into what many
soldiers were feeling and thinking.
Negative language
The negative language used shows Thomas Hardy’s very negative thoughts and
feelings towards the Boer War; as he was suspicious of the empires involvement
in the area Believing it to be exploition and gold mining as the British also
started fighting for the mines rather than for the two states in Africa that were
trying to fight for their independence. He believed it to be inhumane.
Structure:
Dramatic monologue- a first person narrative
This makes the poem feel more personal and more emotive as it is “coming”
from a soldier that had to go through the horrors and mental challenges of the
Boer War.
Cyclical
The poem starts and ends in the same place. The poem opens, talking about the
way if these two soldiers met in a pub, they would be friends and would be
having a drink together. The poem then closes, talking about how if they had met
in a pub they would have bought eachother drinks and helped eachother by
giving eachother “half-a-crown”. This structure demonstrates the pointlessness
of war as it starts and ends in the same place.
Mixture of iambic tetrameters and trimeters
This stresses some lines more than others, it also brings a beat to the poem, a
bit like a heart beat, this could have been used to refelct the fact that all these
soldiers were normal, very real people.
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