The Man He Killed TPCASTT

Title: This poem is probably about someone recounting the time he killed someone...

Paraphrase: He and the man had just met at an inn, and should have sat down and gotten to know each other a little more. But being a foot soldier of the opposing side, they met face to face, and he shot at him while the other shot at him, but the first man's bullet hit home, killing the man at a place that could have brought them together. He shot him because he was the enemy. He had nothing more to do, no job, so he enlisted to get something to bring in money. War is unusual and curious that under any other circumstances

Connotation: The way in which the speaker talks suggests a sense of disappointment in regard to how things would have been under different circumstances in terms of his encounter with the man he killed. He describes alternate circumstances that would have resulted in a more positive outcome than death shown in detail with imagery. He also uses the symbolism of how the inn would usually symbolize a home, somewhere cozy and inviting, but war has made it a place of death, a grave, the complete opposite of hospitable.

Attitude: The attitude of this poem is for the most part regretful. The man wishes that he would not be in the situation where the war has forced his hand to kill a man, but be one that would require that he get to know him rather than to take everything away from the man he has never met.

Shift: The first shift occurs after the first stanza, going from a reflective standpoint to the reality of the encounter with the man. The second shift occurs after the fourth stanza where the speaker it begins to reflect on the effects of war and how you treat someone based on the situation.

Title: The title doesn't give the man a name to show how the speaker in this poem didn't even know him, and yet he still killed him because of the situation of war he was in. He would not know to call him anything other than the man, one that he killed for a reason that remains curious to him.

Theme: War is not a large group of people fighting another large group of people but rather an army fighting for something that a single person or small group of people disagree about, costing many lives that for the most part excludes theirs.