The Man He Killed
1. The Man He Killed was written in 1902 and discusses the Boer War which took place in South Africa.
2. The aspect that this poem discusses is the brutality, inhumanity and futility of war and to ponder how humans are often victims of sheer circumstance and fate. It also addresses the irony - had he and the other soldier met under different circumstances, they would probably be buying each other drinks in a pub instead of trying to kill each other.
3. One emotion conveyed by the poet Thomas Hardy is one of disbelief: “I shot him dead because—because he was my foe, just so…” - this shows how he is in shock to a degree as he cannot find a logical reason why he would do something like that. Another emotion is the infuriation at the futility of war: “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” – this is showing how pointless war is in the fact that if the two men had met anywhere else, they would have probably bought each other a drink! Nostalgia with a touch of melancholy are other emotions conveyed, especially through this quote: “He thought he’d ‘list, perhaps, off-hand like—just as I—was out of work—had sold his traps—no other reason why” - this expresses his view of the “big picture” of war and how he enlisted simply for the sake of it - probably just like the man he ends up killing did - and thinking about the man he killed of more as a person, not an enemy.
4. The poetic devices used in The Man He Killed include rhyme, visual imagery and repetition. The rhyming is an ABAB scheme which makes the poem more mnemonic and memorable; an example of this is “infantry…face…me…place”. The visual imagery in the poem is used to help the reader to put themselves in the man’s position and imagine being there and being him at that time: “But ranged as infantry, and staring face to face, I shot at him and he at me, and killed him in his place…”. The last poetic device is repetition, which reinforces and emphasises the point of the sentence, for example: “I shot him dead because—because he was my foe, just so: my foe of course he was…”.
Men in Green
1. Men in Green was written in 1944 and discusses World War II in Papua New Guinea.
2. The aspect of war that Men in Green focuses on is the soldiers’ distorted perception of war and how quickly it can go from the soldiers being quite determined and filled with patriotism, to them having lost all hope and watching their friends dying right in front of them.
3. The emotions conveyed by the poet begin with determination: “…we set our course towards the east…”; fearlessness: “…they did not fear the ape-like cloud…”, and oblivion to the reality of war: “…the green men laughed aloud…”, showing how ignorant they were. These emotions quickly turn into ones of melancholy and sympathy, “...oh, there were some leaned on stick and some on stretchers lay, but few walked on their own two feet in the early green of day…”.
4. The poetic techniques used in the poem are rhyming, personification and zoomorphism and visual imagery. The rhyming is an ABCB scheme which also makes the poem more mnemonic and memorable, for example: “…green…gun…dawn…sun…”. Personification and zoomorphism are used on numerous occasions to give the objects human-like or animal-like qualities to help us relate to them, for example: “…nature had meet them in the night and stalked them in the day…”, “…spitting tommy-guns, “…white paws of cloud…”, “…ape-like cloud…” and “…hissing cannon shells…”. Visual imagery is used to allow the reader to put themselves in the soldiers’ place and to also imagine the scenery, “…the green men laughed aloud… a hundred hissing cannon shells… their eyes were bright, their looks were dull; their skin had turned to clay…”.
5. I believe the poem Men in Green was more effective at conveying the ideas and feelings associated with war than The Man he Killed as it gives a more detailed account of the distorted perception of war and how they later discover war and its horrible realities. The Man He Killed addresses some of the emotions associated with war and is quite simple: “…yes; quaint and curious war is!...” but Men in Green delves deeper into the thoughts and perceptions of the soldiers and almost tells the story of their feelings: “…they did not fear the ape-like cloud…”, “…the green men laughed aloud…”, “...oh, there were some leaned on stick and some on stretchers lay, but few walked on their own two feet in the early green of day…”. The Man He Killed only goes through the feelings of one particular man at war, whereas Men in Green addresses the feelings of all soldiers at war.
