'The Man He Killed' By Thomas Hardy

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The Man He Killed was written by Thomas Hardy who was one of the most well-known poets and novelists in English literary history. Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), The Return of the Native (1878) and Jude the Obscure (1895) were some of his most renowned works that wildly read by most people nowadays. Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset, England on 2nd June 1840 but sadly died on 11th January 1928 at Max Gate. During his life, Hardy published an incredible amount of artworks which include 8 volumes of poetry, 14 novels, 3 books of short stories and The Dynasts—a poetic drama in 3 parts, 19 acts and 130 scenes. This poem, The Man He Killed was written by Hardy in 1902 during the Second Boer War. Hardy was so against this war because it had caused destruction to human beings and almost 100,000 lives were lost in total. Therefore, with this poem, it helps by giving understanding to the readers about the realities of war and the value of life.

The theme or message that this poem trying to convey to the readers is the damage of war to human beings. War can bring a lot of aspects to society which includes pride, victory, loss, humiliation and most important of
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The structure of the poem is in a conversational tone and this put the readers as the persons who the soldier is talking to. The language is simple, straight-forward and easy to understand with an exception of a few words such as ‘nipperkin’, ‘‘list’, ‘traps’ and ‘quaint and curious’. They are 5 stanzas all together and each one contains 4 lines with every third line of the stanzas is a bit longer than the others. The rhythm of the poem is a simple ABAB rhyme scheme which gives the poem a light-hearted tone despite the grave message it carries. The simplicity of the tone shows that the persona views the war as pointless and does not match with the wreck it brought to the world which at the same time, made him a

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