The Man He Killed

Quiz — The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy

1. Recall – Form & Speaker: What type of dramatic monologue does Hardy use in this poem, and who is the implied speaker addressing?

1. Recall – Historical Context: Which specific conflict is widely considered to have inspired Hardy's writing of The Man He Killed, and approximately when was the poem written?

1. Recall – Key Image: What setting does the speaker imagine as the place where he and the enemy soldier might have met under different circumstances, and what does this setting symbolize?

1. Recall – Vocabulary: What does the term "nipperkin" refer to in the poem, and what does this detail suggest about the speaker's social class?

1. Comprehension – Circular Reasoning: The speaker repeatedly offers the same justification for killing the enemy soldier. What is that justification, and what does its repetition reveal about the speaker's state of mind?

1. Comprehension – The Enemy Soldier's Background: According to the speaker's imagining of the dead man's past, why did the enemy soldier likely enlist? What does this suggest about the two men's similarities?

1. Comprehension – Punctuation as Meaning: Hardy uses a long dash at a critical moment in the poem. What effect does this dash create, and what does it visually represent about the speaker's argument?

1. Analysis – The Word "Foe": The analysis notes that the word "foe" feels out of place compared to the poem's casual, working-class tone. What does the speaker's use of this formal military term suggest about the origins of his reasoning?

1. Analysis – Tone and Irony: The speaker describes the act of killing in war using words that deliberately understate its gravity, such as "quaint and curious." How does this understated language function as a critique of war, and what effect does it have on the reader?

1. Analysis – Hardy's Broader Argument: Drawing on the poem's themes of identity, war, and the soldiers' shared working-class backgrounds, explain how The Man He Killed challenges the idea that ordinary soldiers have a genuine stake in the wars they are sent to fight.

Answer Key

1. Hardy uses a dramatic monologue, a technique borrowed and simplified from Robert Browning, in which an everyday working-class soldier speaks to an implied listener, as if recounting his experience in casual conversation.

1. The poem was inspired by the Second Boer War (1899–1902) and was written in 1902, later published in the 1909 collection Time's Laughingstocks.

1. The speaker imagines meeting the enemy at an inn or pub. This setting symbolizes everyday civilian life — a space of warmth, equality, and shared humanity — in sharp contrast to the dehumanizing battlefield.

1. A "nipperkin" is a small measure of ale or spirits. The detail grounds the speaker firmly in working-class life, reinforcing that both soldiers are ordinary men rather than warriors by nature.

1. The speaker's only justification is that the man was his "foe." The circular repetition of this reasoning reveals that the speaker cannot genuinely rationalize the killing; he is struggling to convince himself rather than offering a real explanation.

1. The speaker imagines the dead man enlisted on a whim — because he was unemployed and had sold his possessions. This mirrors the speaker's own likely circumstances, underlining that the two men were essentially the same kind of person.

1. The dash illustrates the speaker's thoughts faltering mid-sentence. It visually captures a man unable to complete his own argument, making his inner discomfort and moral uncertainty visible on the page.

1. The formal, military word "foe" feels borrowed rather than natural to the speaker. This suggests he is adopting language imposed on him by military or political authority to justify an act he cannot justify in his own words.

1. By describing killing as "quaint and curious," the speaker uses ironic understatement that exposes just how senseless and cruel war actually is. The gap between the mild language and the grim reality creates a quietly devastating critique — the more casual the speaker sounds, the more unsettling the reality becomes for the reader.

1. Hardy shows that both soldiers are working-class men who enlisted out of economic necessity, share the same habits and values, and would naturally have been friends in peacetime. This suggests they had no personal quarrel and no real political stake in the conflict — they were conscripted into a war driven by forces (politics, empire, economics) entirely beyond their control, making the killing both tragic and absurd.