The Man He Killed By Thomas Hardy Diction

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By varying the length of his phrases throughout “The Man He Killed,” Hardy keeps the rhythm of sound from becoming too repetitive. Just as varying sentence length in a books keeps the writing interesting and fresh, enjambment in poetry can serve a similar function. Poets such as Hardy, however, often make the choice of pausing at line breaks or continuing with more thought to the intended effect. In “The Man He Killed,” Hardy uses irregular syntax and peculiar diction to convey the veteran’s confusion and disillusionment toward war and how odd it was he had to to kill. In this case, uniform, line-ended pauses throughout the piece would contradict the pieces tone. By using some phrases the length of a line, such as in the second and third stanzas,