I Have A Rendezvous With Death Analysis

1. Introduction
The First World War (1914-1918) led many young men to join the army for different reasons. In a time of social unrest, it created hope for change and was regarded as liberator for the poor and as kind of pastime for the upper classes. Fighting for the home country, the actions on the battlefields and the confrontation with pain and death inspired many talented writers and poets at war to turn their experiences and thoughts into verse lines. However, the poets did not only depict the reality and horror of war, but there were also ones who celebrated the honour of going to war and dying in action. In my paper I am going to compare two poems dealing with the Great War. The overall themes both poems have in common are war and death; however, while in Strange Meeting (1919), Wilfred Owen uses realistic and unpleasant aspects to describe deadly experiences on the battlefield, Alan Seeger glorifies the patriotic ideal of dying in war in I Have a Rendezvous with Death (1917). The focus of my analysis and comparison of the two poems lies on finding out about their different representations of war and death and by which means they are communicated. Following the introduction, the first part of the second chapter provides contextual and
A meeting and a rendezvous evoke certain connotations; a rendezvous is often planned and done of one’s own volition whereas a meeting is rather spontaneous. The fact, that Seeger’s narrator has a rendezvous with Death as a personification already foreshadows the author’s romantic view on death. For a normal person this phrase would be an oxymoron; for a soldier of World War I it is a patriotic juxtaposition because he has agreed to fight and die for his home country. Wilson’s strange meeting, however, implies that something striking must happen in the poem, either positive or