"The Man He Killed"

When I first read this story before class, I had to read this poem a few times before I understood it. The first line threw me off, “Had he and I but met…”(710). I get a sense of regret. From the title, I am able to conclude that he is feeling regret about the man that he killed. In the first four stanzas, the first lines are fragments. In the last stanza, the first line is a sentence. I think that this is because in the first four stanzas, the speaker is trying to deal with the guilt that he if feeling for killing this man and is shown through the fragmented thoughts. In the last stanza, the speaker is coming to the realization of what he has done and is the past the point of trying to rationalize it. He says, “Yes; quaint and curious was is!” (710). With the first line of the last stanza being a sentence, it is showing a shift in the poem, aka, the realization.


Another thing that I liked about this poem is that it started where it ended. It circled around and made it seem complete. In the first stanza, the speaker is talking about how he would like the sit down and have a drink in the bar with this man. In the last stanza, the speaker is once again talking about how he and the other man could meet in a bar.