“Strange Meeting” As a War poetry

 “Strange Meeting” As a War poetry

“strange meeting” Is a poem about war, the poem treats war as horrifying, wasteful, and dehumanizing: In the words of the enemy soldier, it presents the “pity of war distilled.” According to the poem, war destroys the landscape in which its fought; it erodes the natural solidarity between human beings, turning people who might be friends into mortal enemies; and it robs the soldiers who fight of their capacity to speak truth to power—to resist the wars in which they give their lives. What's more, the trauma of war lingers even after the battle is over. 

Describing the deep, dark tunnel in which he finds himself—the speaker describes war as a fundamentally destructive force. Indeed, “titanic wars” Have cut the tunnel in which the speaker finds himself. In other words, war created “hell” Itself. And though the tunnel is protected from the battle above, it leaves its mark on the soldiers stuck below: The enemy’s soldier’s face is “grained” With “a thousand fears” Even in hell. The violence of the battle has even deprived the enemy soldier of his humanity. Instead of being a full human being, he is a “vision”: He has been reduced to being a specter or a ghost.

In his long speech, the enemy soldier picks up on this theme. Instead of granting him dignity and immortality through heroic deeds, war has robbed him of hope and life. The enemy soldier’s key hope is that he would be able to tell people about the horrors of war, and thus prevent future wars. However, because he has been killed in battle, he won’t be able to convey this message to the world—and, as a result, the world will continue to go to war without questioning why their governments resort to violence: “none will break ranks.” Just as the war has diminished the enemy soldier’s own humanity, making him into a “vision” Instead of a full human being. 

The poem stages this betrayal in its final lines, where the enemy soldier reveals who killed him: The speaker himself. The enemy soldier announces, “i am the enemy you killed, my friend.” The line is paradoxical:This is a bitter irony: All the devastation, horror, and dehumanization that the poem describes is unnecessary. In fantasizing about a better world, a world in which the two soldiers are friends instead of enemies, the soldier demonstrates just how unnecessarily brutal and horrifying this world actually is.