Analysis of "The Man He Killed"

The narrator of Thomas Hardy's "The Man He Killed" is stationed as an infantry soldier and speaks of an enemy soldier he was forced to kill in defense during a war. The actual act of the killing isn't really described or detailed. In fact, it only seems to be mentioned in passing, as if only to make the reader understand the situation. The narrator is assumed to be a simple and average person, due to his use of common slang phrases and cut off words, such as "nipperkin" and "'list." He is not a hardened and robotic soldier either. Rather, he simply joined the army "off-hand-like" and possibly because of financial situations (Hardy 814).

Instead of metaphors and similes, the poem focuses on a 'what if' type of situation. The narrator wonders what would have happened if he and his victim had met any place else besides a battle field. Had they met in a bar, would they have drank together in companionship? Would the enemy soldier have been the type he would have easily loaned money to? What sort of man was this person that he killed?

Because he is not an experienced soldier, the narrator finds it difficult to comprehend the situation. Despite the fact that he knows the obvious reasons for his actions, that during a war it is a 'kill or be killed' situation, he still tries to find a deeper meaning. The broken syntax that begins in the third stanza "is an important element of [the poem's] tone and a guide to the speaker's state of mind" (DiYanni 810). As he attempts to justify his actions, the narrator hesitates, as if not truly believing that is all there is to the killing. He seems skeptical that the taking of a life can be justified as easily as 'he was my foe.'