Effective Use of Revision in Strange Meeting Essay -- Owen Strange Mee

Effective Use of Revision in Strange Meeting In writing his poem Strange Meeting, Wilfred Owen uses rewrite as a pricking to two clarify his ideas and re-evaluate genius of the central intents in the poem. By examining a reproduction of Owens original text and comparing it to the final, published copy, we ar able to retrace his steps and, hopefully, gain a further soul of his thought process and motivations concerning this particular poem. From these examinations, it is evident that Owen spent a self-aggrandizing portion of the revision process attempting to alter the suit of the encumbered railroad tie, whom the narrator encounters in hell. These alterations could be viewed as an attempt by Owen to launch this vision more ambiguous, vague, and otherworldly, and therefore to alter his readers perception of this character, the narrator, and the poem itself. The pellucid frequency of revisions concerning the appearance and characteristics of the religious figure are sta ggering when compared to flesh of revisions made elsewhere in the poem. Perhaps the first thing one notices while examining Owens revisions is the long stretch during the figures expression in which there are very few marks of revision by the author. In contrast, the sections in which the figure is described, or in which he describes himself, are heavily revised. It appears, then, Owens primary difficulty with the first gulping of his poem was not with the content of what the ghostly speaker said, but with how the character was portrayed. Owen pays strict attention during revision to every mention of this ghostly figure. thither are at least six changes made to the text concerning the figures description, including two changes dedicated sol... ...hat absurd how can enemies be friends, and why should they fight and kill one another? In order to turn about these changes in perception, Wilfred Owen focused the majority of his revisions on the character of the ghostly figure f ound in hell. By making this figure appear more abstract, vague, and otherworldly, Owen alters the significance of his poem and its statements and assumptions about war and battle from draft to draft. By making use of a few seemingly unimportant revisions, he is able to use the re-evaluation of one character to affect the readers perceptions of both the other main character in the poem, and the poem as a whole. Works CitedOwen, Wilfred. Strange Meeting. The Norton Anthology of English Literature The Twentieth Century volume 2C Seventh Edition. Ed. M.H. Abrahms. New York, N.Y. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2000.