The Full Text of “The Man He Killed”
1"Had he and I but met
2 By some old ancient inn,
3We should have sat us down to wet
4 Right many a nipperkin!
5 "But ranged as infantry,
6 And staring face to face,
7I shot at him as he at me,
8 And killed him in his place.
9 "I shot him dead because —
10 Because he was my foe,
11Just so: my foe of course he was;
12 That's clear enough; although
13 "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
14 Off-hand like — just as I —
15Was out of work — had sold his traps —
16 No other reason why.
17 "Yes; quaint and curious war is!
18 You shoot a fellow down
19You'd treat if met where any bar is,
20 Or help to half-a-crown."
The Full Text of “The Man He Killed”
1"Had he and I but met
2 By some old ancient inn,
3We should have sat us down to wet
4 Right many a nipperkin!
5 "But ranged as infantry,
6 And staring face to face,
7I shot at him as he at me,
8 And killed him in his place.
9 "I shot him dead because —
10 Because he was my foe,
11Just so: my foe of course he was;
12 That's clear enough; although
13 "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
14 Off-hand like — just as I —
15Was out of work — had sold his traps —
16 No other reason why.
17 "Yes; quaint and curious war is!
18 You shoot a fellow down
19You'd treat if met where any bar is,
20 Or help to half-a-crown."
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“The Man He Killed” Introduction
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"The Man He Killed" was written by the British Victorian poet and novelist Thomas Hardy and first published in 1902. A dramatic monologue, the poem's speaker recounts having to kill a man in war with whom he had found himself "face to face." Talking casually throughout, the speaker discusses how this man could easily have been his friend, someone he might have, under different circumstances, had a drink with in an "ancient inn." Struggling to find a good reason for shooting the man, the speaker says it was "just so"—it was just what happens during war. The poem thus highlights the senselessness and wasteful tragedy of human conflict and is specifically thought to have been inspired by the events of the Boer War in South Africa.
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“The Man He Killed” Summary
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"If only we'd met in some old pub, we would have sat down and shared many a beer!
"But I met him on the battlefield, each of us aiming at the other. We both took aim and fired, but he missed, while my shot killed him where he stood.
"I shot him dead because... well, because he was the enemy, that's all. He was the one I was supposed to shoot, obviously.
"Then again, he'd probably joined his army in similar circumstances to me, on a kind of whim. He was probably out of work at the time, just like I was. He'd probably had to sell his belongings—I can't think why else he would have enlisted.
"Yup, war is a very strange thing! You end up shooting someone who you'd get along well with in a bar—who you'd even give money if they needed it."
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“The Man He Killed” Themes
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The Senselessness of War
“The Man He Killed” is a dramatic monologue in which the speaker talks about the time he shot and killed a man during a war. Reflecting on the experience, the speaker notes how arbitrary it all seemed; rather than his enemy being someone totally different from the speaker, this other soldier was remarkably similar. Indeed, the speaker imagines he could easily have been friends with this man! The poem, then, argues that war is senseless, tragic, and brutal, and that it ignores the common humanity between people on different sides of a conflict.
The poem itself is told as if it is a conversation taking place in a pub (and the poem makes not one but two references to drinking establishments). The speaker talks unguardedly to the addressee, who could be a friend, the reader, or a combination of both. The poem builds a sense that the speaker is talking to the addressee in the same way he would have talked to the man he killed, had they met in a bar rather than on the battlefield.
The poem starts by posing an alternative reality—that is, what could have happened rather than what did. If, says the speaker, he and his “foe” had met near on “old ancient inn,” they would have drunk together (expressed in the friendly slang of “wet / Right many a nipperkin”). In other words, they would have gotten along well and easily found common ground. But unfortunately the real meeting of the two men was on a battlefield, where they stood “face to face” and shot at each other. (Luckily for the speaker, his bullet found the target and the other man’s missed.) The phrase “face to face” signals not only the physical closeness between the two at the time, but the similarity between them more generally. This highlights the tragedy of war, which pushes two men who have no reason to hate each other to fight to the death.
The speaker tries to offer the reason behind the killing, but all he can say is that “I shot him dead because— / Because he was my foe.” There’s no great animosity here, no true cause for vengeance, it was “Just so.” The other man had to die because he was on the other side of the conflict. The lack of a strong and purposeful reasoning here highlights the arbitrariness of war, the way people find themselves fighting just because they're from different countries. And there is literally “No other reason why.” The two men tried to kill each other because that’s just what happens in war, highlighting both the senselessness and the waste of human life that comes with conflict.
In the last stanza, the speaker calls war “quaint and curious.” Of course, it’s more than that—it’s deadly and tragic. But this understatement foregrounds the way that the speaker, ultimately, was following orders when he killed this other man, rather than obeying any personal sense of morality. He knows that the man was hardly any different from him, but felt he had to shoot him out of duty (and self-preservation). The poem closes by restating its main point: if the speaker had met the other man at a bar, he would have treated him to a drink, or leant him money if he’d needed it. The speaker’s normal, natural instinct would be to act compassionately and generously to his fellow man—but war corrupts this common understanding.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Man He Killed”
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Lines 1-4
"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!"The Man He Killed" opens with quotation marks, indicating that what follows might be something that has been overheard. This is more important than it might first appear. The poem essentially juxtaposes two scenarios, one real and one imagined. The first is the actual meeting between "he and I," the poem's two characters. These two men were on either side of a war, and the speaker—who is clearly still alive to speak these words!—shot and killed the other man. In the other scenario, this speaker recounts how he could easily have imagined going out for a drink with the man he killed—how similar the other man was to him.
This stanza sets up the juxtaposition between these two scenarios, and that the fact that poem plays out as reported speech captures this juxtaposition. That is, the speaker seems to be engaged in exactly the kind of casual conversation that might be overhead in an "old ancient inn." He uses the tone and language (if not the subject matter) that he would have used with the man he killed. Even before the first letter of the first line, then, the poem is already developing its exploration of the tragedy and wastefulness of warfare!
The poem opens with alliteration. The two breathy /h/ sounds of "Had he" perhaps express a kind of exasperation, anticipating the weary subject of humanity's capacity for violence—though the poem is only just beginning to introduce these themes. The use of "right" and "nipperkin" indicate that the speaker is from England; both words are colloquial English (though "nipperkin" has fallen out of usage). "Right" is an intensifying word, roughly the same as using "so" (i.e., "so many"). And a "nipperkin" is a small measurement of beer. The speaker's point is easy enough to grasp—if he'd met the man he killed under different circumstances, the two of them would have had a great time together, drinking until the early hours.
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Lines 5-8
"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place. -
Lines 9-12
"I shot him dead because —
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although -
Lines 13-16
"He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like — just as I —
Was out of work — had sold his traps —
No other reason why. -
Lines 17-20
"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."
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“The Man He Killed” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
There are a handful of examples of alliteration in "The Man He Killed." Quite a few of them occur through repeated words, such as "face to face" in line 6 and the repeated "foe" in lines 10 and 11. The sound of these words, combined with the regular iambic meter and the rhyme scheme, make the poem sound almost like a nursery rhyme. This creates a tension in the poem, between the genuine horror of what's being discussed—the shooting and killing of a man—and the tone in which it is presented.
All in all, this serves to highlight the senselessness of war. The playfulness of the poem's sounds don't really feel appropriate, creating a sense of irony that questions the reason for war in the first place. That is, the sing-song tone of the poem seems somewhat hollow—just as the speaker's reason for killing the other man is ultimately because it was "Just so."
Other than repeated words, there are a few more instances of alliteration. Interestingly, the poem starts and ends with the same alliterative sound: the /h/. "Had he" starts the poem with a breathy tone, perhaps suggesting some kind of exasperation on the speaker's part about the stupidity of war. In the last line, the alliteration of "help" and "half" makes the speaker's imagined alternative meeting between him and the other man seem as though it could easily have happened, as though the difference between the two scenarios—meeting on a battlefield and meeting at a pub—is as casual as the speaker's tone.
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Consonance
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Diacope
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Epizeuxis
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Juxtaposition
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"The Man He Killed" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Inn
- Right Many
- Nipperkin
- Ranged
- Infantry
- Foe
- 'List
- Off-hand
- Like
- Traps
- Quaint
- Curious
- Half-a-crown
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Like a pub, but also with rooms to stay in, like a small hotel.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Man He Killed”
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Form
"The Man He Killed" is made up of five quatrains, following a structure similar to (though not exactly like) the ballad stanza format. The steady stanza length, combined with the bouncy iambic meter, gives the poem an almost nursery rhyme sound, creating an uneasy tension between the lightness of the form and the heaviness of the subject. In a way, this makes sense, because the speaker is talking in a fairly casual manner—he isn't glad he killed the other man, but he's hardly expressing deep remorse either. Rather, he's trying to work through what happened in a straightforward way.
The poem is also a dramatic monologue, and the entire text is enclosed by quotation marks. This indicates it is overheard speech, though who the listener is is another matter—perhaps it's another man in a pub, or the reader, or both. The first stanza presents an alternative scenario in which the speaker and the man he killed could have been acquaintances, drinking together in an "old ancient inn." The second stanza explains what actually happened, while the third sees the speaker reaching for a reason behind his actions. In the fourth stanza, the speaker imagines that he and the other man had similar reasons for joining their respective armies. The poem closes almost whimsically, returning to the first stanza's sentiment, yet also injecting a note of tragedy.
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Meter
"The Man He Killed" is a metrically regular poem, using iambs (da DUM) throughout (with some variation). Generally speaking, the first, second, and fourth lines of each stanza have three metrical feet (making them iambic trimeter), while the third line has four (making them iambic tetrameter). The third stanza provides a good example of this scheme:
"I shot | him dead | because —
Because | he was | my foe,
Just so: | my foe | of course | he was;
That's clear | enough; | althoughThe poem is close to the sound of a ballad, or even a nursery rhyme. The short metrical lines, and their regularity, give the poem a breezy tone. Yet the lightness of the poem's meter sounds at odds with the gravity of the subject matter. Additionally, although the poem employs this highly formal structure, the speaker's words sound casual and unguarded. In fact, the speaker sounds like a regular person having a conversation at a bar.
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Rhyme Scheme
"The Man He Killed" has a regular rhyme scheme. Each stanza rhymes:
ABAB
While this is a formal device, the combination of the short lines with the regularity of the rhyme makes the poem sound informal. The steady, clear rhymes give the tone a breezy, casual quality at odds with the subject matter. And as the whole poem is framed by quotation marks, the sound of the rhymes actually helps make this sound like overheard conversation—or, more accurately, one half of a conversation.
Additionally, the rhymes make the poem sound almost like a nursery rhyme, which again creates a tension between the lightness of the tone and the gravity of the subject matter. The sing-song quality in the rhyme mirrors the speaker's lack of reason for killing the other man. That is, by framing the seriousness of the poem in such a playful-sounding scheme, the poem highlights the lack of a good reason for the man having to die.
It's also notable how the last stanza rhymes "war is" with "bar is." This means the poem ends by neatly reminding the reader of the two scenarios presented by the poem: the reality, in which the other man is dead ("war"), and the imaginary, in which the two men share a drink together ("bar").
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“The Man He Killed” Speaker
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The speaker in the poem killed "the man" in the title. He is either a soldier or an ex-soldier, and enlisted in the army because he didn't really have anything better to do—he was "out of work." The poem is a first-person dramatic monologue framed by quotation marks, suggesting that it is overheard conversation. Accordingly, the speaker seems to be speaking unguardedly, as though to a friend (which is ironic, because he's imagining sitting down to a similar type of conversation with the man he killed).
This reported speech highlights the similarity between the two men. The speaker finds it easy to imagine befriending the man he killed, who probably joined his army for similar reasons that the speaker enlisted in his. Ultimately, the speaker is unable to answer the question underlying his conversation. That is, he can't really say what the purpose of war actually is. He only killed the man because it was "Just so"—that's just the way it had to be.
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“The Man He Killed” Setting
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"The Man He Killed" is written entirely in quotation marks, suggesting it could be an overheard conversation. The speaker talks in an unguarded, conversational tone, implying that he's in the kind of "ancient inn" or "bar" that he mentions. In fact, when the poem was first published, Hardy included a description of the setting: "Scene: the settle of the Fox Inn, Stagfoot Lane. Characters: The speaker (a returned soldier) and his friends, natives of the hamlet."
But the poem is also in a sense set in the speaker's thoughts—both his memory and his imagination. He recalls the episode in question—his killing of the other man—but still finds it difficult to understand. He imagines how different things could have been if the two men had met in better circumstances—which, ironically, would have been similar to the setting of the poem.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Man He Killed”
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Literary Context
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 and became one of the most successful novelists of the Victorian era. His later novels, including Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles, challenged Victorian sensibilities, and the often angry reaction to their publication led him to focus on poetry in his later years. This poem was written in 1902 and is one of a number of anti-war poems Hardy wrote in response to the Boer War conflict. Other relevant anti-war poems of Hardy's include "Drummer Hodge," "The Souls of the Slain," "A Christmas Ghost-story," and "A Wife in London."
Other poets responded to the war in different ways. Rudyard Kipling, for example, wrote poetry that spoke enthusiastically about the British army's prospects. A.E. Housman's collection of poetry A Shropshire Lad is another important work within the context of the Boer War. Released in 1896, its popularity greatly increased with the advent of the war, as the book's themes of nostalgia, warfare, and patriotism struck a chord with the general public.
In an interesting twist, Hardy wrote poems that were more supportive of war when the First World War came around. By then, Hardy was 74 years old. At the British government's request, he wrote poems like "Men Who March Away," which advocated fighting for the British cause.
Historical Context
"The Man He Killed" was written in response to the Boer War. This was a conflict that took place in what is now referred to as South Africa and lasted from 1899-1902. It was euphemistically called "The Last of the Gentleman's Wars," though it was anything but that. British forces fought against groups antagonistic to British rule, and total casualties amounted to 60,000 people.
Hardy himself was suspicious of the Empire's involvement in the area, believing it to be in large part due to the rich resources of the land (especially gold). More recent scholarship has highlighted the controversial use of concentration camps by the British in the war. In fact, most of the more than 25,000 Afrikaners imprisoned in these camps died due to starvation and disease.
The wider context of the Boer War is the Victorian era, during which the British Empire exerted far-reaching control over much of the globe. For some, this was a source of pride; others, like Hardy, were more critical.
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More “The Man He Killed” Resources
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External Resources
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Radio Documentary — A radio documentary about Hardy's life and work.
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Boer War Explanation — A BBC article that gives a clear account of the Boer War.
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Boer War Poetry — Further poetry related to the Boer War.
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Commentaries on Hardy Poems — A valuable resource of Hardy poems and analyses, provided by The Thomas Hardy Society.
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A Reading — The poem read by Jordan Harling.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Thomas Hardy
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