'The Man He Killed' By Thomas Hardy

War is hell. Nations have gone to war over land, resources and nationalistic pride. Many writers have depicted war as an absurd tragedy. Both “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy and “Old Mother Savage” by Guy de Maupassant explore the theme that war is absurd because it makes enemies of those who would otherwise be friends. First, the speaker of “The Man He Killed” discovers that war makes enemies of those who would otherwise be friends. The speaker of the poem is a soldier that is on the battlefield facing his enemy. In the first stanza, the speaker of the poem exclaims “Had he and I but met…we should have sat us down to wet right many a nipperkin”! In other words, the speaker of the poem means to say that if he had met his enemy during
In the fourth stanza, the speaker speculates that his enemy enlisted in the army casually because he was out of work and forced to sell his tools, just as he was. To illustrate, the speaker states, “He thought he’d ‘list, perhaps, off-hand like—just as I—was out of work…”. In addition, the speaker of the poem expected to hate his enemy, but ironically, he realizes that he and his enemy could have been friends. In fact, the speaker emphasizes the detail that if they had met in times of tranquility, he would have bought his enemy a drink, or even loaned him some
In the process of fulfilling her plan, Old Mother Savage allows the soldiers to sleep in the attic, and provides them with plenty of hay so that they will be warm. Ironically, she then removes the ladder to the attic, locks the door, and sets the house on fire. As she stands outside with her shotgun, she tells the German officer that she was the one that set the fire and takes out a piece of paper with the names and addresses of the Prussian soldiers. From this, it is evident that Old Mother Savage wanted the mothers of the soldiers to feel the same pain that she felt. At the conclusion of the story, Old Mother Savage is executed by a firing squad. Through the short story, it is apparent that war turned Old Mother Savage into a vicious