War Poetry in Mahmoud Darwish's "To Our Land" and Wilfred Owen's "Strange Meeting": Comparative Analysis

Abstract

War has been a persistent phenomenon throughout human history. The effects of this phenomenon are devastating and extend well beyond the battlefield to include the loss of thousands of lives, physical harm, psychological trauma, displacement of countless numbers of people, and destruction of entire communities. The topic of war has thus become a central theme for poets, novelists and other men of letters trying to portray the horrors and dire consequences of armed conflicts, as well as the strength of the human soul. The present study is aimed at exploring the theme of war in poetry across cultures. To this end, two poems (i.e. Mahmoud Darwish's "To Our Land" and Wilfred Owen's "Strange Meeting") are selected to be analyzed and compared in terms of their themes and stylistic devices. The paper thus seeks to provide an in-depth understanding of the poets' perceptions of war and the cultural and historical contexts that appear to have shaped them, with a special focus on certain issues such as identity loss, displacement, and reconciliation. The results indicate that both poems, despite their different backgrounds, portray a common human experience of war and its emotional impact on all sections of society