The Effects of "He" and "I"

3. The Man He Killed (From "The Dynasts")

"HAD he and I but met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have sat us down to wet

Right many a nipperkin!


"But ranged as infantry,
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And staring face to face,

I shot at him as he at me,

And killed him in his place.


"I shot him dead because—

Because he was my foe,
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Just so: my foe of course he was;

That's clear enough; although


"He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,

Off-hand like—just as I—

Was out of work—had sold his traps—
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No other reason why.


"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 poem by Thomas Hardy is drastically different from O'Brian's chapter "The Man I Killed" despite the clear parallel in the action and time depicted. The author and the reader are separated from the action in this poem, primarily because it is not a personal account on the author's part. The author quotes a conversation with a war veteran but leaves himself out of the dialogue entirely. By having the man's story told from his perspective, a distinct connection between author and reader is lost. There is little intimacy present between the writer and what he is portraying because it is not depicted as his own experience. This is an occasion where I think the author should have taken on the perspective of the war veteran. His use of colloquial language does personify the man and does create a closeness between him and the man, unfortunately, this excludes the reader. The poem serves as a vague account of death and war and conveys the irony in shooting a man you may have other wise bought a drink for or demonstrated some act of kindness towards out of sheer human decency. In class we discussed how many war veterans, when they go to write war stories, write in the third person in order to separate themselves from the different person they became in battle. I don't know if this is the case with Thomas Hardy, but it is my opinion that his use of "he" instead of "I" in the title(whether or not it is his own experience), caused his work to be less effective than O'Brian's account.
In Tim O'Brian's chapter "The Man I Killed", he brings his emotions directly to the conscious of the reader. By retelling the events following the murder of the young man, rather than Hardy's mere "I shot at him and he at me". The young man becomes almost a tangible entity, as O'Brian repetitively describes the star-shaped hole where his eye used to be, his thin eyebrows, the cowlick in his hair, "the slight tear at the lobe of one ear", and the opening of his neck at the spinal cord. What makes this chapter so effective is his invention of the person behind the soldier, the mathematician, scholar, lover, son that wore the mask of an enemy. Although these descriptions are mere inventions, the fact remains that this person had a history, had a life. O'Brian's description breathes life into unimaginable guilt he feels. The chapter becomes not so much about O'Brian, but about the man he killed, unlike Hardy's poem which is primarily about the speaker. Although it remains unclear whether or not O'Brian actually killed a man, placing himself in that position grants a greater enormity to his action. The death of this young man becomes incredibly real to the reader because it is told as if it is happening in that moment, unlike the poem which separates definitively between past and present. It is this inclusion of the reader that makes The Things They Carried a true war story, which evokes the emotions of the reader simultaneously with that of the author. Whether any of it actually happened is irrelevant.
While I appreciate the idea represented in Thomas Hardy's poem, I found it inadequate in appealing to an audience that hadn't actually been in the war. I couldn't relate to the poem in any respect. It is melancholy and saddened me to an extent, but I felt like the poem captured a conversation that came with the prerequisite of understanding, rather than attempting to capture the turbulant emotions present at the time.