The Man He Killed (Thomas Hardy)

Didn't Thomas Hardy write novels? Perhaps, he did, but he also wrote this poem. It rhymes. ABAB. It has a fairly obvious point. But despite these junior high poetic necessities, it is so well crafted that it just hits the spot and I don't think it has any weak spots.

I think it escapes Jr. High because the soldier who is the speaker is clearly defined without ever explicitly being talked about. It's not so direct because it wants and needs for the subject to be universal. It never gives the man a name or a side or a time period. However, it does gives him a human heart. It shows him attempting to rationalize the chaotic and nonsensical nature of war. "I shot him dead because--/Because he was my foe,/Just so: my foe of course he was;/That's clear enough; although"

That humanness of questioning, rationalizing, and empathizing is what raises this poem above the baseness it hints at.

Favorite line: "I shot him dead because--/Because he was my foe,/Just so"