STRANGE MEETINGS : WAR POEMS OF HARDY TO OWEN PART 2 : SASSOON AND OWEN

Sassoon's meeting with the First World War brought him anger; anger for politicians, bishops, military caste and other social establishments. His poems are satirical as well as ironical. "'They'" is an excellent example of the kind. A bishop's deceptive remark at the last line of the poem will bring us to a big and fundamental question that for whom and for what soldiers must fight. His apocalyptic poem "Enemies" reminds us Owen's "Strange Meeting." It is a poem of reconciliation among soldiers who killed each other. Owen became a poet by the war. He was like neither Brooke nor Sassoon. The war was a bitter but heroic trial for Brooke to identify himself with England. Sassoon tried to reject the war with anger. Owen, however, accepted it with hopelessness. His rage was too furious to criticize the long standing establishments which Sassoon got angry with. He blamed the sun, the mother of life, for the pity of war in his " Futility." He cursed the Creation and the human existence itself because of war. "Strange Meeting" is one of the best examples of all his poems that expressed" the pity of war.