The Man He Killed

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1902

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Historical Context: The Boer War

The late-19th-century British war against the Dutch settlers in southern Africa, the self-governing Afrikaners or Boers, was not the British Empire’s finest hour. It was fought needlessly, largely for mercenary gain, and was executed in strategies that deliberately involved massive civilian casualties.

The war spanned 1899-1902 during the waning years of Queen Victoria’s lengthy reign—more than 60 years, during which Britain’s colonial possessions had expanded the country’s reach by more than 10 million square miles into a global empire. The British conservative government decided to act against the intransigent Boer government to demonstrate Britain’s international military and economic clout, and more specifically, to secure access to the newly-discovered reserves of both diamonds and gold in the area known as the Transvaal.

From the beginning of the war in 1899, the British military effort was hampered not only because of the vast distance between England and southern Africa but also by the committed and unflappable Boer guerrilla forces that bedeviled British positions and disrupted already vulnerable supply lines. Despite a significant weapons advantage, most notably new rapid-fire machine guns, the British could not gain an upper hand.

Back home, support for the war was stirred up by xenophobic nationalism and a campaign of propaganda by the government, who upcycled the war into a crusade for British international pride. In the meantime, the British military began using broader strategies to break the will of the Boers, most notably the construction of an archipelago of internment camps for civilians and the use of high-powered explosives against civilian populations, reports of which circulated in London at the time Hardy composed “The Man He Killed.” In the end, Britain drove the Boers to submission and acquired the Transvaal but suffered considerable damage to its international reputation. The war itself became something of a blueprint for the catastrophic British military tactics later in World War I.

Literary Context: The Dramatic Monologue

The genre of the dramatic monologue is as old as drama itself, dating back to Antiquity, when the grand figures of a tragedy take a moment, step entirely out of the action (often literally by stepping to the side of the stage), and share aloud their deepest and most complicated thoughts. The monologue was a way to give audiences a glimpse into the dimensions of that character’s moral dilemma, their motivation for their actions, and ultimately the depth of their humanity.

Poetry maintains that model, even when the apparatus of the stage itself is removed. A character speaks and, without authorial intrusion or commentary, reveals their character, psychology, limitations, and virtues through an immediacy long associated with the bond between characters on stage and members of the audience. The more the character speaks, the more they reveal, sometimes unwittingly. This allows for irony when the reader perceives an often negative aspect of the character that the character themself is unaware of or trying to hide.

Encouraged in part by the rise in the science of psychology, dramatic monologues saw an increase of interest in Victorian England. Hardy’s most productive years coincided with the emerging reputation of Robert Browning, who most notably experimented with the dramatic monologue device as a way of revealing complex characters and creating immediacy to the development of a character. His most notable experiments in the form—“My Last Duchess” (1842), “Fra Lippo Lippi” (1855), or “The Bishop Orders His Tomb” (1845)—anticipate Hardy’s use of the device here. For Hardy, the dramatic monologue technique creates sympathy for the nameless speaker and gives the reader access to the man’s moral confusion, his uneasiness at what he has done, and his anything-but-reassuring closing observation. Recognizing the dangers of voicing a straightforward indictment of Britain’s military imbroglio in southern Africa, Hardy avoids the issue entirely by creating a soldier and allowing that character the chance to speak and in the process indict not merely the Boer War but war itself.