What kind of literary devices were used in "The Man He Killed" by Thomas Hardy?

Literary devices used in the poem " href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173594">The Man He Killed" by
English writer Thomas Hardy include the
following:

1. A Protagonist and
Antagonist

In this poem, the
narrator is the protagonist and the man he is talking about, the one he killed, is the
antagonist. The protagonist of the story had a struggle against the antagonist and
killed him. In this poem, as the narrator (protagonist) relates his story, the lines
eventually blur as to whether either man is a protagonist or antagonist. The narrator
realizes that this man, like him, probably joined the army because he needed money – he
was unemployed just as the narrator. They did not join for ideological
reasons.

2. Ballad
Model

“The Man He Killed” is
written in the ballad format, which is stanzas consisting of four lines each. It is a
narrative poem because it is a poem that tells a story. Here the story is how the
narrator killed a man, and that under different circumstances, these two men would
probably share an ale with each other in a tavern as friends if not for the scourge of
war upon their landscape.

3. A
Rhyme Scheme

This five stanza
poem is twenty lines in total. In each four line stanza, line number 1 rhymes with line
number 3, and line number 2 rhymes with line number 4. This is consistent throughout the
poem. Therefore, the rhyme scheme is
ABAB/CDCD/EFEF/GHGH/IJIJ.

4. Use
of a
“Caesura’

In
poetry, a caesura is when the poet puts a strong pause within a particular verse line.
Thomas Hardy employs a caesura in stanza number 4 (line 2), with the dash or hyphen he
injects into the middle of the
line:

Off-hand like — just as I
—

This strong pause causes the reader
to stop and ponder what the poet is saying, if only for a second. The caesura, in
essence, jolts the reader a bit; it stops the smooth flow of the poem so as to grab the
attention of the reader and make a certain
point.

5. Use of
Iambs

An iamb is when a stressed
syllable follows an unstressed syllable. An example of this in the poem “The Man He
Killed’ is evident in the first line of the first stanza, as well as throughout the
poem. The bold, underlined syllables are the stressed
syllables:

Had
he/ and I/ but
met

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