Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The speaker is a returned soldier who killed a man in combat. He joined the war because he was unemployed and needed to make a living.
Form and Meter
The poem is a dramatic monologue made up of five quatrains. All lines in each stanza are written in iambic trimeter except for the third lines, which are in iambic tetrameter.
Metaphors and Similes
The speaker says, “To wet / Right many a nipperkin” to describe having drinks with the enemy soldier.
Alliteration and Assonance
Alliteration appears in the first line “Had he and I but met”. Also in emphasizing their physical encounter, the speaker says “And staring face to face”.
Irony
The speaker has to kill the enemy soldier in the context of fulfilling his patriotic duty but would be friends with him if they met in everyday situations.
Genre
War poetry
Setting
The poem is set in the speaker’s thoughts as he recalls the war on a battlefield. In the present, the speaker is in a bar or inn having drinks.
Tone
Playful yet dismal; Conversational
Protagonist and Antagonist
The speaker is the protagonist while the enemy soldier is the antagonist on the battlefield. However, he reassesses the context of the situation and portrays war in general as the antagonist.
Major Conflict
The major conflict is the fact that the speaker did not want to kill the other man but had to. Therefore, the war acts as the source of this conflict causing the speaker to contemplate the life of the enemy soldier.
Climax
The climax reaches when the speaker acknowledges the reason he joined the war was unemployment perhaps akin to the soldier he killed.
Foreshadowing
N/A
Understatement
The speaker understates the magnitude and impact of war by asserting, “Yes; quaint and curious war is”.
Allusions
The poem alludes to the Second Boer War was taking place during its conception.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The term “Half-a-crown” in the last line is a synecdoche for money.
Personification
The speaker personifies the war as an entity that is senseless with the capability to ignore shared humanity.
Hyperbole
The fact that the returned soldier suggests that he could have been friends with the enemy in different circumstances is an overstatement.
Onomatopoeia
N/A
