19 pages • 38 minutes read
Thomas HardyA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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.
By Thomas Hardy
Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave
Thomas Hardy
At an Inn
Thomas Hardy
Channel Firing
Thomas Hardy
Far From The Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy
Neutral Tones
Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy
The Convergence of the Twain: Lines on the loss of the "Titanic"
Thomas Hardy
The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy
The Return of the Native
Thomas Hardy
The Withered Arm and Other Stories
Thomas Hardy
The Woodlanders
Thomas Hardy
African History
View Collection
British Literature
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Colonialism & Postcolonialism
View Collection
European History
View Collection
Memorial Day Reads
View Collection
Military Reads
View Collection
Psychology
View Collection
Sexual Harassment & Violence
View Collection
Victorian Literature
View Collection
Victorian Literature / Period
View Collection
War
View Collection