Humanitarianism and War with Special Reference to Wilfred Owen’s Strange Meeting

Abstract

This paper attempts to figure out the poem Strange Meeting by Wilfred Owen from a humanitarian context. Wilfred Owen is one of the leading poets, who is best known for writing war poems during World War I. Strange Meeting is one of his most famous war poems, which deals with senseless destruction of war and humanity. As change in every individual can be a social change, prioritising humanity in war can create tremendous changes in society.
Prioritising a humanitarian approach considers that war can produce destruction, death, and hopelessness, whereas humanity fills the world with peace. Death and destruction in battle are not supposed to be glorified as human beings are considered valuable when they are human. Wilfred Owen is not sentimentalizing heroism in war. Instead, he makes us visualise the war as horrifying, unreasonable, and dehumanising and introduces us to the insinuating realities of war, interests, the power of ideological manipulation, and other important psychological aspects.
This paper also identifies ways to find humanitarianism in war by exposing the recent suffering people have experienced in the name of war. Analysing the poetry of war poets allows the reader to focus on another side of war from a humanitarian perspective.