Strange Meeting' Summary and analysis (with additions by Anupam Banerjee)

'Strange Meeting' is a poem about reconciliation. It is an interaction between two soliders on the other side of the grave, both being dead; it is a
fictitious interaction presented poetically to expose the most brutal and disturbing realities about life and war with the First World War serving as
the backdrop. Two soldiers meet in an imagined Hell, the first having killed the second in battle.
Kay Ryan and Commentary on "Home to Roost"
Wilfred Owen fought and died in WW1, being fatally wounded just a week before the war ended with an armistice in May 1918. By all accounts,
he wanted to return to the front line, despite suffering from shell shock, to justify his art.
'I know I shall be killed,' he told his brother, 'but it's the only place I can make my protest from.'
Owen disliked the gentle, sentimental poetry that gave a distorted view of the war by glorifying war as glamorous or even desirable.
The majority of the poem is a dialogue between the two soldiers, set in a dream-like environment that is, in fact, Hell. Enemies in war, the two
become reconciled in the end. What better way of explaining how futile malice, gratuitous and gluttonous ambition coupled with Machtpolitik,
and the inferno of war and its irreversible consequences are in our ephemeral lives on the moral plane!

Owen had his problems with the way patriotism was mixed with religion and then used to champion the cause of war which served the petty egos
of politicians and their egos. This letter from Owen to a friend in 1917 shows a little of what the poet was thinking:
'Christ is literally in no man's land. There men often hear his voice: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for a friend.
Is it spoken in English only and French? I do not believe so. Thus you see how pure Christianity will not fit in with pure patriotism.'
Owen's poem contains a message of love and forgiveness. It was written at a time when hate and loathing were at their height when a war on an
unimaginable scale took the lives of millions of young men and women. With the development of science and technology, machine guns and
tanks caused the kind of death and havoc that had been unprecedented in recorded history till the First World War.
Analysis of 'Strange Meeting' Lines 1-22
 The title shows that this will not be an ordinary meeting - and the two opening words add further uncertainty about the coming encounter, the
speaker saying it only seemed he came straight from the battle and entered the tunnel that brought him to a curious landscape. The word
“seemed” creates a sense of equivocation; it is not clear or sure to the reader what the speaker is trying to present and yet it is intriguing because
the title uses the adjective “strange”.
Note the pararhyme (Pararhyme is a half-rhyme in which there is vowel variation within the same consonant pattern: Too fast in
thought or death to be bestirred./Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared; “bestirred” and “stared” create the pararhyme)
already working its magic with enjambment and alliteration to produce an opening sentence, the likes of which was new for the reader
in 1920. A sense of hard, grinding history is introduced with images of both granite and the Titanic wars (the actual Titanic ship had
foundered in 1912).
 So, the speaker is setting the scene. Having been transported, after his own death, to this severe and shocking environment, he also comes across
other soldiers who are having difficulty 'sleeping', who are stuck in their minds or are dead. This is a clear reference to the after effects of war that
include PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) or neurosis or schizophrenia among soldiers who have been scared and scarred for life because
they were trying to survive for months and years in places where continuous explosions and bullet fires created a danse macabre with flying limbs
and decapitated bodies writhing in pain even as the final twist of the knife by a monstrous war rubbed through their viscera.
 As the speaker tries to rouse them, one springs up, a sad and knowing look in his eyes, hands held as if in benediction. Owen's use of internal
rhyme and repetition is clear in lines 7 - 10. Note piteous/eyes and distressful/bless together with smile, I knew and dead smile, I knew.
By the end of the second stanza, the reader is in no doubt of the ghostly, surreal and horrific nature of this environment, which is a post-battle
Hell. There are subtle hints that the speaker and the soldier with the dead smile are known to each other. It is also very disturbing that the poem is
so close to reality; the narrative of the poem vindicates the truth about every artistic creation – poems and stories can be imaginary and
imaginative but they have relevance; when you read a poem or a story , it does not matter whether they reveal facts to you; it is important that
they tell you the truth.
 The third stanza's opening line has an extra beat (11 syllables), suggesting that the vision of the dead soldier's face is extraordinary given that
there is no connection to the real world up above, the battlefield with all its personified sounds. When men move on to the wisdom beyond the
petty differences on the mortal life and reflect on life once the performance on the stage of life is over, the futility of war and violence need no
gainsaying.
 Initiating dialogue, the speaker's opening comments are meant to allay fear and make a connection free of animosity and sadness. The use of the
word friend immediately flags up the idea that this is a meeting between equals; there is now no enemy.
 The response is direct—at first, agreement that mourning for the dead is not needed but then acknowledgment of the many futures lost and the
hopelessness of the situation. One may remember a quote from the Bard of Avon in this context:
“Irreparable is the loss, and patience
Says it is past her cure.” (The Tempest Act V Sc i)

 Note the syntax changing as the dialogue (monologue) develops. Enjambment disappears and punctuation holds sway in terms of syntax, the pace
within the iambic pentameter steadied by comma and semi-colon.
 The dead soldier now comes 'alive' in line 17, the first-person pronoun signalling a more personal approach. This soldier, this German soldier,
also had a life full of hope, just as the speaker had. Essentially, these two are the same: young men hunting after the wildest beauty, the essence of
life, that which cares not for routine things and feels deeply, even in grief, much more so than in Hell. The presentation of the German soldier as a
friend and a fellow human being is a marked deviation from the contemporary social and political convention of demonizing the enemy ; the
enemy is also a human and he has the same emotions as we do and thus war makes no sense; this should be horse sense to the rational human race
and yet we have wars. It seems that the instinct of self-destruction is inherent and atavistic in the human race.
 Note the pararhymes hair, hour and here, soft-sounding, almost ephemeral.
Further Analysis Lines 23-44
 All the emotion is ineffective now, from laughter to tears, it has died. And with it, the truth which is yet to be told. This is the truth of pity, made
up of sorrow and compassion, expressed when others are suffering as they have been doing in untold numbers in the war. Young lives , with
infinite potential to creatively express themselves in art, literature , music , theatre , cinema , administration, statesmanship, engineering and
above all , medical science have been lost forever- this is the ‘Pity of War” or the terrible truth of war which must arouse pity and fear and a sense
of discomfiture at “What man has made of man” (Wordsworth)
Owen wanted more than anything to have his poetry stand for pity. In the preface to this book, he wrote: 'My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.'
 Now men will go content ... future generations might learn about peace or join in this madness of destruction that we started. They'll be more
aggressive and stubborn and make hard work of any progress.
 I thought I was brave and wise, going into the unknown, still a master of my own fate, but now history is leaving me behind. How vulnerable the
world will be.
 The wheels of the war machine grind to a halt in the blood that's been spilled; I will clean them, purify and heal with water from the deep well.
This is an allusion to the Bible, John 4, 7-14 or Revelation 7, 17, where water is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. The soldier is saying that he will
wash the blood-clogged wheels with the pure (emotional) truth.
 I would have poured my spirit..again, this phrase comes from the Bible, and is found in the books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel and Acts of the
Apostles. Basically, the soldier is giving his life as a sacrifice for humanity, hoping that they will see the truth about war. (without stint means
without limit). However, he does not want to waste it on the wounds or foul business of war. The question is whether the youth who are alive
shall be allowed to survive in a world where wars are condescended upon as regressive and antediluvian nonsense fit for barbarians trapped in the
time warp of stone age survival realities. Alas, even today , a world without wars in the rational human civilization remains a distant utopia.
That devastating line 40. The second soldier reveals to the first the grim news of his killing but does reciprocate and call him friend (see line 14).
“Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.”

There is recognition of the shared expression even as death occurred, which the second soldier tried in vain to avert. Moreover, if foreheads are
bleeding despite the absence of wounds, blood is being shed without any rhyme or reason.
 The first soldier's frown as he bayonets the second soldier is an expression of doubt, self-loathing perhaps, a reluctance to kill. There is a clear
parallel in “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy; warfare makes enemies out of potential friends, who given an opportunity , shall share coffee
or a drink:
“Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."

 The final line has the second soldier suggesting they both sleep now, having been reconciled, having learnt that pity, distilled by the awful
suffering of war, is the only way forward for humankind.

Stylistic features of the poem’s language:

Owen is a master of pararhyme, where the stressed vowels differ but the consonants are similar, and he uses this technique throughout the poem.
So note the end words: escaped/scooped, groined/groaned, bestirred/stared and so on.
The second vowel is usually lower in pitch adding to the oddity of the sounds, bringing dissonance and a sense of failure. So whilst there is
common ground between the rhymes there is equally discomfort, the feeling that something isn't quite what it should be.
If Owen had used full rhyme this unease would be missing, so the imperfection perfectly fits the surreal situation of the two men meeting in Hell.
Metrical Analysis
Strange Meeting is written in iambic pentameter, that is, the de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM stress pattern dominates, but there
are lines that vary and these are important because they challenge the reader to alter the emphasis on certain words and phrases.
So, here are three examples to illustrate, with lines 7, 27, and 30:
 With pit / eous re /cognit / ion in / fixed eyes,
The first foot is iambic (non stress, stress ux), the second foot a pyrrhic (no stress, no stress, uu), the third another iamb, the fourth another
pyrrhic and the fifth foot a spondee (stress, stress xx).