“Strange Meeting” by Wilfred Owen explores an extraordinary encounter between two enemy combatants in the middle of a battle. Owen renounces the familiar poetics of glory and honor associated with war and instead constructs a balance between graphic reality and compassion for the entrenched soldier. In fact, the poetic appeal of the text comes from pity and sympathy for the characters in the work rather than from an exaggerated idea of ​​the characters' heroism. Owen achieves this appeal through both narrative and device. First, the poem's narrative is built on a shared humanity, particularly in the face of death, between the speaker and the stranger, evoking the reader's sympathy for the young men. Second, consonance, semantic connotation, onomatopoeia, and tone subtly create a sense of the characters' pitiful situation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The poem begins with the protagonist, a soldier, moving through a tunnel to escape the battle. He says, “It seemed as if I had escaped from the battle / Into a deep, boring tunnel” (1-2). The tunnel is deep to the extent that the realistic world above is now mute; in fact, the surreal quality of an underworld only makes it seem like it's escaping from battle. The tunnel itself is cut through long-lived "granites" from previous "titanic wars", reminding the reader of the endless timeline of man's wars and helping to establish the epic quality of the poem (3). He continues: “Yet there, too, the burdened sleepers groaned, / Too quick in thought or death to be stirred” (4-5). His separation from the fight allows him a new perspective. Here, although just steps from the war, lie soldiers in transition to death. The fact that they are too quick to death to be bothered suggests that this is where they must be burdened by death, especially since it is much more peaceful to die in the dreamlike basement than in the battle raging above. After a soldier rises to greet him, the speaker notices the stranger: With pitiful recognition in staring eyes, Raising his hands in distress, as if to bless. And by his smile, I knew this sullen room, – By his dead smile, I knew we were in hell. (7-10) “Pitiful gratitude” suggests many meanings. When the soldier stares at the speaker, he may recognize the speaker (perhaps a sort of foreshadowing given the poem's conclusion) and feel pity for the predicament the speaker finds himself in. speaker because he too is caught up in the war. It may be that the soldier's "staring eyes" are themselves pitiful, obscured by images of those killed in battle. Additionally, line eight contains several instances of the letter "s", presenting a lot of consonance. This consonance, given the context, evokes the sound of the shallow, troubled breathing of dying soldiers. Combined with the semantic interpretations of the line, we have both an image and a sound: the image of a distraught man recognizing an unexpected face; the sound of the labored breathing of dying soldiers. The speaker continues: With a thousand sorrows the face of this vision was grained; yet no blood came from the heights, and no rifle banged, nor moaned in the smoke pipes. “Strange friend,” I said, “There is no reason to cry. " (11-4) The use of the word "grained" by the speaker has particularly important connotations. First, we have the impression that the pains of war have, ina meaning, taken away from this soldier his identity; his face is just a canvas of the pain he endured. Additionally, one might think of a grainy, black-and-white photograph from the First World War, in which the men's faces are almost indistinguishable. The speaker informs the stranger that he has no reason to look so bothered, given that they are safe from the war above. Indeed, the onomatopoeia contained in the words "struck" and "the smoke moans" bring a certain degree of momentary reality (as much as the recitation of the poem can allow) to otherwise cold descriptions of the battle. The stranger responds: “None[…] save the lost years, / Despair. Whatever your hope, / So was my life” (15-7). The soldier says that the real losses, the real cause of mourning, are the years spent in war and the years that will never come. In fact, he says, “save the wasted years,” as if his words were a command. The last words of the soldier's sentence, "despair", are placed on a new line; the pause that precedes and follows forces the word to linger in the reader's mind, giving us a slight taste of this man's desperation. More importantly, the stranger invokes the common bond he shares with the speaker. Both men had a life before the war; now only the speaker's hopes remain alive. The stranger continues: Now men will be content with what we have spoiled, Or, discontented, will boil in blood and spill. They will be fast with the speed of the tigress. None will break ranks, yet nations are moving away from progress. (26-9) In these lines, the despair of the stranger mentioned in the previous paragraph becomes mythologized. His sense of despair is not isolated from his own personal condition. On the contrary, he despairs for all men, men numbed by the sights, sounds and tragedies of war. In fact, he fears that people will settle for the evils of war and that the beauty of the world will be spoiled. The fact that the stranger invokes the image of the Tigress (the river on which the first great human civilizations were built) suggests that this contentment with bloodshed is historical, that the sensitivity of the combatants has been muted by the wars of yesteryear. Worse, complacency over such offenses will only promise more conflict as men refuse to question historical precedents of war – or “break ranks” – even as their nations cease to prosper. . In lines 30-39, the strange soldier reflects on how it was he who gave life, could save humanity from its depravity: Courage was mine, and I had mystery, Wisdom was mine me, and I had control: To miss the march of this world in retreat In vain citadels which are not walled, Then, when much blood had flowed clogged the wheels of their chariots, I would go up and wash them from the wells gentle, even with truths too deep to be defiled. I would have poured out my spirit without effort But not through wounds; not at the end of the war. The men's foreheads bled where there was no wound. (30-9)The courage to fight did not bring satisfaction. It brought only one mystery – the mystery of never knowing the years of one's later life, of never knowing peace and old age. Yet in his death he possesses wisdom. In fact, by invoking the notion of mastery, he seems to suggest that wisdom taught him to ignore the drumbeat of courage in favor of peace, that wisdom gave him mastery of contentment in the face of war. He now knows that it is wiser to avoid combat, to “miss the step” towards combat,., 2005. 891-2.