The man he killed Thomas Hardy analysis

He went to Mr. Last academy of gentlemen where he studied literature among other subjects (Williams). In 1856, his formal education ended and this is because his parents could not afford to cater for the expenses of his university education (Williams), and his life then took an architectural path. Hardy got married in 1870 and after the death of his wife in 1912, he started his career in poetry (Williams). His wife’s death had a traumatic impact on him and it influenced him to write poems to reflect upon her life. His writings are mainly aimed at the discovery and assimilation the literacy past (Fitzgibbon and Zurzolo). His style has influenced authors such as Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas among others (Fitzgibbon and Zurzolo).

He influences them through his lyrical, formal and descriptive style of writing by invoking their memories in depicting familiar objects and places. Despite hardy always writing about the past, his style of writing powerfully presents his ideas in a modernist voice (Fitzgibbon and Zurzolo). ‘The Man He Killed’, posted below, is an example of his poems that depicts his style of writing. The major themes in ‘The Man He Killed’ by Thomas Hardy are guilt, warfare, and the dynamics of society and class (Muhammad and Muhammed 14-24). Thomas Hardy uses the theme of warfare to show us that this is not a normal war story. He talks about his neighborhood by mentioning an old ancient inn, he mentions the nipperkin and even describes how he and the man he killed stared at each other before the violence ensued.

This indicates a personal connection that haunts him. By describing the circumstances under which he met the man killed, hardy communicates that the war that made him kill that man had no purpose as it was for neither glory nor sacrifice and he just killed for no gain at all. Both of them are just normal people in the society with no ranks in the government or the army. As normal people in the society, they are the ones fighting and suffering the losses and not the people at the top (Muhammad and Muhammed 14-24). Thomas Hardy uses this scenario to communicate that during a war, the lower people in the society suffer a lot, and the upper-class members of the society who probably started the war do not suffer as much.

This is another point that he uses to illustrate how senseless and illogical war is. The other element used by Thomas hardy to explain the illogical and senseless nature of the war is the clever use of language, imagery, and symbols. When it comes to the use of imagery, Thomas Hardy is trying to imagine the life of the man he killed after killing him, he imagines that he was also out of work after selling his straps. By going through his thoughts and creating an Image on how the life of the man he killed was, he ends up with so much guilt. The guilt he feels after that thought is also an indication that the conflict between them had no logical grounds.

When it comes to the use of language, in the poem hardy says that ‘I shot at him as he at me’. This indicates that they are both guilty of attacking each other. He talks about how he just met the man he killed, how he probably was also a worker who had come to relax after a long day at work, and due to some reasons that he is not sure about, he kills this man. The Boers war, on the other hand, is a setting used by Thomas Hardy to communicate the dynamics of war in a gruesome and messy environment. This is not a friendly environment and most people who have never experienced this kind of war cannot relate to it.

It is not a place where people come together to reminisce the events of the day, and the war in such an environment involves the death of many people and not just one that hardy killed in the pub. The Boers war was serious and it killed so many people just because of a disagreement that could have been solved if people just came together and talked. In this poem, as a character too, Thomas Hardy appears as a shell-shocked soldier. The guilt he feels after killing the man passes as a post-traumatic stress disorder on him. What haunts him is the fact that he is similar to the man he killed. They are of the same economic and social class and there is no reason why he should have killed him to promote someone’s interests (Wright 94-111).