Hardy Wolf Comparison

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Hardy/Wolff Comparison 1. When I think of how the two are different, I think of one on one conflict versus one troop shooting into empty space not knowing what is being hit or rather who is being hit. Hardy writes “And staring face to face,/ I shot at him as he at me” (Hardy, lines 6-7). Wolff states “We blew up the road leading from My Tho so they couldn't attack us with the trucks and armored personnel carriers they'd seized. We blew up the surrounding tree lines to deny them cover and the dikes so they couldn't use them as trails. We blew up the landings along the river. Wherever they might move or hide in the countryside around us we dropped high explosives. Then we turned our attention to the town.” 2. In “The Lesson”, Wolff says that even though it wasn't their choice, they felt what they did was justified. “The process by which we helped lay waste to My Tho seemed not of our making and at all times necessary and right.” In contrast, the narrator in “The Man He Killed” seems to think that it was pointless and if they only met at a bar, they would have had a grand time. “You shoot a fellow down/ You'd treat, if met where any bar is,/Or help to half-a-crown.“ (Hardy, lines 18-20) 3. “The Man He Killed” makes me think of the American civil war. There were families that were fighting against each other. In the poem, there were two strangers that as Hardy states, could have been friends and enlisted possibly because they were out of work and it was something to do. I think the lesson Tobias Wolff learned was that even though American's tried to tell the Vietnam nationals that they would protect them and be friends, when push came to shove and they couldn't tell the difference between the nationals and the VC, the soldiers would kill anyone that they felt were threats of their own
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