The Man He Killed

In the end, he has no real justifiable reason and wonders at how "quaint and curious war is" to make one kill a man as easily as becoming friends at an inn.

These format choices make the poem almost like a nursery rhyme in its simplicity, providing an ironic contrast to its unpleasant subject.

The heavy irony of terms compared to the events narrated in the poem contrast in purposeful ways that emphasize the senselessness of how war seems.

The poem considers the irrational situation of war, and diminishing patriotic motives of the soldiers that meet one another on the battlefield.

By giving his readers the perspective of an ordinary man’s life and experience, Hardy asked broader questions about the purpose of war in general.

Soldiers progressively begin to have a harder time summoning the it-could-have-been-me scenarios of fate that have traditionally provided a warrior's haunted but honorable bottom-line consolation.

[9] The poem was recited extemporaneously by ex-U.S. Representative James Symington during an on-camera interview in the final episode of Ken Burns's 1990 PBS miniseries, The Civil War.