NON-AFRICAN POETRY Discuss the major regrets of the slain soldier in "Strange Meeting"

Answer Details

In Wilfred Owen's Strange Meeting, the speaker, a dead soldier, escapes down some "profound dull tunnel" out of battle into a hell-like underworld, where he meets another dead man who slowly proves to be the enemy soldier he himself killed the day before. Before the two are reconciled, the slain soldier pours out his regrets, and these lamentations form the heart of the poem and carry Owen's protest against the waste of war.

Regret for a wasted, unfulfilled life. The dead soldier mourns "the undone years, the hopelessness." His youth and future have been cut off, and all that he might have lived and achieved is lost. He grieves for a life extinguished before it could be completed.

Regret for lost beauty and joy. He laments that he had hunted "the wildest beauty in the world," a beauty of vision and imagination beyond mere appearances. Death has robbed him of the capacity to seek and enjoy that beauty, and of the gladness and laughter that life could have held.

Regret for the truth of war left untold. His deepest regret is that he will never be able to tell the world "the truth untold, / The pity of war, the pity war distilled." He had a message, to warn humanity of war's real horror, and now, being dead, he cannot deliver it. Men will therefore go on content with what has been spoiled, or worse, break out into fiercer wars.

Regret for a world that will not learn. He foresees that nations will "trek from progress," retreating from civilisation into further slaughter. He mourns that his death, and the truth he carried, will not save mankind from repeating the cycle of destruction. He had wished to "pour my spirit" out to cleanse the world, but the chance is gone.

Regret over the futility of the killing. The poem ends with the terrible recognition, "I am the enemy you killed, my friend," and the invitation, "Let us sleep now." The slain soldier's final regret is the utter futility of the enmity itself, for the two men, alike in youth and hope, need not have been enemies at all.

In conclusion, the slain soldier's major regrets are the loss of his unlived years, the beauty and joy denied him, and above all the truth about the pity of war that he can no longer tell a world doomed to keep on killing. Through these laments Owen delivers his powerful indictment of the senseless waste of war.