The Man He Killed

The poem juxtaposes two symbolic settings, the battlefield across which the two soldiers stand and the “ancient inn” (Line 2) that the speaker imagines as he struggles to understand why he killed a complete stranger. The battlefield is well-known to the literary tradition: It is a public scape defined by competition, violence, heroism, and opposition, and it is sustained by governments and rulers. It is an environment defined by artificial boundaries that are in turn sustained and defended by licensing murder. The speaker visualizes the battlefield for the reader. Described in the recent past, it is a place where soldiers are “ranged” (Line 5) like objects, positioned “face to face” (Line 6) in confrontation, and where killing takes place: “I shot at him as he at me / And killed him in his place” (Lines 7-8). On the battlefield, lines are drawn, a foe is a foe, and everyone understands the rules of engagement. The poem disrupts this image of the battlefield as heroic, masculine, and straightforward by introducing an alternative setting—the inn, a setting with vastly different connotations.