The Myth of Self Determinism

From the opening lines of “The Man He Killed,” Hardy’s speaker is clear about the lack of agency individuals have in determining the emotional affect underlying their personal relations. He shows that the relationship between himself and the man he ends up killing is entirely independent of their individual dispositions. Rather, the only variable that truly matters for whether the meeting of the two men ends in friendship or enmity, life or death, is setting: make the setting some “old ancient inn,” and then “We should have sat us down to wet / Right many a nipperkin!,” but change the setting to battlefield, where the men are “ranged as infantry,” and the result is nearly the opposite as before, such that “I shot at him as he at me, / And killed him in his place” (2-4, 5, 7-8). This matter of life or...