'The Man He Killed' By Thomas Hardy

The death of another human being in war can be life-scarring for a person who never wanted to kill. But, killing another man affects people in different ways. In “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy the author attempts to address his reaction to killing a man in war through poetry. Tim O’Brien’s short story, “The Man I Killed,” answers Hardy’s poem by addressing another way someone can handle killing another person. While Hardy’s poem shows how the main character and the man he killed could have been friends, O’Brien’s short story relates the man the main character killed back to his own past and sees himself in the dead man. Both of these writings, however, address death in war as a necessary thing for the survival of the “sides” the war

Yet, both men seem to wonder why this is a necessity in the world in general. Hardy suggests this when he states that “I shot him dead because, - / Because he was my foe.” The hyphenation between the phrases shows that the main character in the poem had no idea why he was really killing this man either than because he was on the other side of the war. O’Brien shows this through his main character’s description of the “life” of the man he killed, stating that “ He imagined covering his head and lying in a deep hole and closing his eyes and not moving until the war was over. He had no stomach for violence.” This makes it clear that the man he killed may have never been a threat or wanted to be a part of the war, making it very clear that killing in war may be pointless. Both of these authors seem to believe that war, to some extent, is pointless when the people they were fighting would have never been a threat outside of war. Overall, both authors have a strong belief that killing in war is necessary within the war, but unnecessary without the context of

While O’Brien is shocked at his ability to kill another man instead of the man killing him, Hardy seems less shocked by killing the man, and more shocked by the fact that he killed someone in lieu of being their friend. Throughout O’Brien’s short story, the main character keeps describing the man he killed, as if in shock, and creating the story of the dead man with similarities to his, stating that “...the young man would not have wanted to be a soldier and in his heart would have feared performing badly in battle.” This not only shows the guilt the main character has, but also shows the shock he is in through his description of the dead man’s “story.” Hardy’s viewpoint on death in war leans more towards a “what could have been” perspective, stating “You shoot a fellow down / You’d treat if met where any bar is, / Or help to half-a-crown.” O’Brien tends to see himself in the man he killed, while Hardy only sees who could have been a friend of his in another situation. These two men, overall simply felt different emotions when killing a man, and both are equally scarring. O’Brien viewed his killing of a man as a death of part of himself, while Hardy saw his killing as the death of a