"Strange Meeting" by Wilfred Owen.

Authors Avatar

Tom Wood 11A1                29/9/2002

“Strange Meeting” by Wilfred Owen

“At the time he wrote this poem, Wilfred Owen had lost hope for the war generation: civilians could not understand, soldiers could not explain. All a war poet could do was warn children, they might find consolation later that a true voice had managed to speak. His poems might prove that there is something indestructible in this human spirit. That would only be consolation if future generations acted on his warning and loved their fellow men.”

Owen felt he failed as a poet. From your reading of “Strange Meeting”, what do you think?

In the poem “Strange Meeting”, Wilfred Owen believes he has failed as a poet. I think that he would be trying to warn future generations and also tell the truth about the war to civilians. His aim was to make civilians realise what war was really like and for the war to end. Wilfred Owen has a negative attitude towards war in general, and this negativity shows constantly throughout his poem “Strange Meeting”.

One of the main ideas of the poem is “the pity of war” and this shows Owens’ belief that war creates more problems that it solves.

“I mean the truth untold, the pity of war, the pity war distilled.”

Wilfred Owen is telling us here that the soldiers cannot explain what war was like and that the real truth was not being told, as it should be. The truth is “the pity of war and Wilfred Owen is trying to tell this message in his poem, because as a poet he believes that it is his duty to tell everyone how terrible war is. Owen is hoping that war will make people show pity and think about what war actually achieves for mankind.

Join now!

Wilfred Owen shows us that war does not move the human race on, but takes it backwards. He believes that war is not suitable in today’s society.

“Much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels”

I this quotation, Owen is explaining that war (the blood) is halting humanity (chariot-wheels) from progressing. He believes war is what people did a long time ago when they had a disagreement, and it has no place in modern society. When humanity is evolving and moving the human race. On one step, war is taking us back two steps. He would rather leader talk about their ...

This is a preview of the whole essay