Analysis of The Man He Killed, Reconciliation, and Dreamers

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Analysis of The Man He Killed, Reconciliation, and Dreamers

In the chosen poems, Thomas Hardy, Walt Whitman, and Sigfried Sassoon

each have a common viewpoint: war brings out the worst in man, a feeling buried

deep inside the heart. Even with this clotting of the mind due to the twisting

ways of war, a flicker of remorse, a dream of someplace, something else still

exists within the rational thought. These poems express hope, the hope that war

will not be necessary. They show that man only kills because he must, not

because of some inbred passion for death. These three authors express this

viewpoint in their own ways in their poems: "The Man He Killed",

"Reconciliation", and "Dreamers".

In The Man He Killed, Hardy speaks about the absurdity of war. He gives

a narrative of how he kills a "foe", and that this "foe" could be a friend if

they met "by some old ancient inn", instead of the battlefield. Hardy says

"...quaint and curious war is...you shoot a fellow down you'd treat if met

where any bar is..." In this Hardy speaks how war twists the mind, and also

makes you kill people you have no personal vendetta against.

In Reconciliation, Whitman shows the devastation of war. In a war, you

kill someone and even if you win, you lose. Whitman describes a man mourning

over the death of his foe. He rejoices over the ultimate death of war

"Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must...be utterly lost." He

also feels great remorse over his so called e...

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