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Here's the first paragraph of the plot of the movie 'How to Train Your Dragon' in Wikipedia:

The Viking village of Berk, located on a remote island, is attacked frequently by dragons, which take livestock and damage property. Hiccup, the awkward fifteen-year-old son of the village chieftain, Stoick the Vast, is deemed too scrawny and weak to fight the dragons, so he instead creates mechanical devices under his apprenticeship with Gobber, the village blacksmith, though Hiccup's inventions often backfire. During one attack, Hiccup uses a bolas launcher to shoot down a Night Fury, a dangerous and rare dragon of which little is known, but no one believes him, so he searches for the fallen dragon on his own. He finds the dragon in the forest, tangled in his net, but cannot bring himself to kill it, and instead sets it free.

The emboldened last sentence corresponds to a first YouTube video, which I suggest you watch in order to fully understand the context.

Now, later in the movie, there's this scene (the whole script is here):

Astrid: It's a mess. You must feel horrible. You've lost everything; your father, your tribe, your best friend...

Hiccup: Thank you for summing that up. [sadly] Why couldn't I have killed that dragon when I found him in the woods? Would've been better, for everyone.

In the emboldened sentence, Hiccup is referring to his earlier action described in the last sentence of the above plot and the first YouTube video.

And this later conversation is shown in this second YouTube video, which I think you must watch to answer this question.

Question

Why did Hiccup say have killed instead of kill in the second YouTube video?

Would there be any difference in meaning if he used kill instead?

Why couldn't I kill that dragon when I found him in the woods?

Community
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JK2
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1 Answers1

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The kill version indicates that he tried but failed.

  • Q: Why couldn’t I pull the sword from the stone?

  • A: Because you aren’t King Arthur.

The have killed version indicates thinking about a choice different from what actually happened. It strongly suggests that the speaker thought they could have successfully taken the contemplated choice, and regrets that they didn’t.

  • Q: Why couldn’t I have studied harder for the exam?

  • Response: Now you know what to do next time.

Lawrence
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  • Do you mean that couldn't in couldn't have killed/studied/pulled/etc. cannot express ability, whereas couldn't in couldn't kill/study/pull/etc. can? – JK2 Aug 25 '19 at 16:47
  • @JK2 They aren’t just different tenses - they communicate different ideas altogether. – Lawrence Aug 25 '19 at 18:16
  • I didn't ask if they're just different tenses... – JK2 Aug 26 '19 at 00:30
  • @JK2 I didn’t say you did. The have killed usage is idiomatic. In your example, it is a rhetorical question, focused on choice and not ability. In a different context, it might be literal. – Lawrence Aug 26 '19 at 15:26
  • But you can make a question "rhetorical" without using the perfect form. In fact, I don't think a rhetorical question has anything to do with the perfect form, because most idiomatic rhetorical questions don't have such a form. For example, What was I thinking? more often than not is used rhetorically, meaning that you're regretting having acted in such and such a way, rather than that you're literally asking about your past thought process. In the same vein, why can't Why couldn't I kill that dragon? mean that the speaker is regretting failing to kill it? – JK2 Aug 27 '19 at 05:23
  • @JK2 The context, especially “[sadly]” suggests it is rhetorical. I understand you disagree. Feel free to raise a question about that. – Lawrence Aug 27 '19 at 10:36
  • I agree that the original question is rhetorical. What I'm asking is why "couldn't kill" cannot be rhetorical. And if you really want to know the context, I suggest you watch the videos, rather than rely on the transcript. I spent time finding and posting those videos because I wanted them to be watched by all those posting an answer. – JK2 Aug 27 '19 at 14:25