Effective Use of Revision in Strange Meeting In writing his poem Strange Meeting, Wilfred Owen uses revision as a tool to both clarify his ideas and reevaluate one of the central figures of the poetry. By examining a reproduction of Owen's original text and comparing it to the final published copy, we are able to retrace his steps and hopefully gain further understanding of his thought process and motivations regarding this particular poem. From these examinations, it is evident that Owen spent much of the revision process attempting to alter the character of the "encumbered sleeper," whom the narrator encounters in hell. These alterations could be seen as an attempt on Owen's part to make this "vision" more ambiguous, vague, and otherworldly, and thus to alter his readers' perception of this character, the narrator, and the poem itself. the appearance and characteristics of the ghostly figure are baffling when compared to the number of revisions made elsewhere in the poem. Perhaps the first thing you notice when examining Owen's revisions is the long stretch during the figure's speech in which there are very few signs 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 seems, then, that Owen's main difficulty with the first draft of his poem was not with the content of what the ghostly speaker said, but with the way the character was portrayed. Owen pays close attention during the review to any mention of this ghostly figure. There are at least six changes made to the text regarding the description of the figure, including two changes dedicated to just...... half of the paper ......how absurd; How can enemies be friends, and why should they fight and kill each other? To bring about these changes in perception, Wilfred Owen focused most of his revisions on the character of the ghostly figure found in hell. By making this figure seem more abstract, vague, and otherworldly, Owen alters the meaning of his poem and his statements and assumptions about war and battle from one draft to the next. By making use of some seemingly irrelevant revisions, he is able to use the reevaluation of one character to influence the readers' perception of both the poem's other main character, and the poem as a whole. Works Cited: Owen, Wilfred. "Strange encounter." The Norton Anthology of EnglishLiterature The Twentieth Century Volume 2C Seventh Edition. Ed. MH Abrahms. New York, NYW Norton & Company, Inc., 2000.