The Man He Killed — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
The Man He Killed
The poems
What you need to know
A former soldier reflects that the man he shot in battle might, in other circumstances, have been a friend to share a drink with, and struggles to explain why he killed him.
How Hardy's ballad-like form, chatty voice, hesitant dashes and the repeated word foe show a soldier trying and failing to justify killing a man much like himself.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Had he and I but met', 'By some old ancient inn', 'Right many a nipperkin', 'I shot at him as he at me', 'Because he was my foe', 'my foe of course he was', 'Was out of work', 'quaint and curious war is', 'You shoot a fellow down'.
Form: five quatrains rhyming ABAB in short lines like a ballad or nursery rhyme, a dramatic monologue set in speech marks, and dashes and repetition in the middle stanza where the speaker's reasoning falters.
Context: Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), the Dorset novelist and poet; written in 1902 and first published that November, at the end of the Second Boer War (1899–1902) between the British Empire and the Boer republics of South Africa; and Hardy's other war poems, such as Drummer Hodge.
Compares well with: Exposure (a soldier's view of the pointlessness of war), The Charge of the Light Brigade (soldiers who do not question orders) and A Poison Tree (what makes someone a foe).
