4. What is the purpose of the …show more content…
In the last stanza of “The Man He Killed,” what attitudes towards war does the speaker express? What, from the evidence of this poem, would you infer Hardy’s attitude toward war to be? Cite evidence from the poem. (pg 205) In the last stanza of “The Man He Killed,” the speaker tells us he thinks the war is strange, unusual, and pointless. In the last stanza, Hardy states, “Yes; quaint and curious war is! / You shoot a fellow down / You’d treat if met where any bar is” (17-19). From this, we can gather that the speaker doesn’t see the point of war because people are just killing other people that any other time they would have drinks with at the bar. Earlier on in the poem, it says, “I shot him dead because - / Because he was my foe” (9-10). In these lines, we can see that Hardy doesn’t see the point in killing. People only kill because they are told that this person is their foe, not because they actually want to kill. The third stanza says, “Was out of work - has sold his traps - / No other reason why” (15-16). Both men that are fighting are just doing their job because they need the work, not because they are passionate about the fight. This shows that both the speaker of the story and Hardy don’t find war as something purposeful but just something people do because it’s their