Breakdown of kare ga ki no doku da to omotta.
Questions & Answers about kare ga ki no doku da to omotta.
No. 気の毒(きのどく) is a fixed expression, and you should learn it as a whole.
In this sentence, 気の毒だ means something like:
- pitiful
- sad to see
- deserving sympathy
- I feel sorry for him
So 彼が気の毒だと思った means I thought he was pitiful or more naturally I felt sorry for him.
Even though the kanji are 気 + の + 毒, the expression is not understood by translating each part literally.
Here, 彼が is the subject of the idea being thought.
The structure is:
- 彼が気の毒だ = He is pitiful / I feel sorry for him
- 彼が気の毒だと = that he was pitiful / that I felt sorry for him
- 彼が気の毒だと思った = I thought that he was pitiful / I felt sorry for him
So が marks 彼 as the subject inside the clause before と思った.
If you used 彼は, it would sound different. は would mark him as the topic, which is possible in some contexts, but が is very natural when marking the subject of a thought or statement inside a quoted clause.
