Disabled by Wilfred Owen: an Analysis

Disabled by Wilfred Owen: an Analysis

“Disabled” : The human cost of war

Wilfred Owen’ s poem “Disabled” was written during his four-month stay at Craiglock-
hart Hospital in 1917. The poem eloquently depicts the disassociation and detachment from self
and society felt by this solider who has become disabled. Owen uses the term “queer” to show
that the soldier’ s losses have made his body alien. These injuries have also removed his social
masculinity.
As I read the poetry of Wilfred Owen, I was often disheartened by his realistic depictions
of military combat. For the poet, the condition of shell shock from which he was suffering during
his stay at Craiglockhart Hospital was an important physical and poetic position for his writing.
Owen wrote in opposition to the war and yet supported the men he served with his poetry by
bringing the discomfort and horror of war to the eyes of the public. Disabled is one of the poems
written during his period at Craiglockhart that develops the disassociation and detachment from
self and society felt by most soldiers.
In the poem, the concept of what the poet terms “queer” implies the alienation caused by
the loss of the soldier’ s legs. In response to the recognition the soldier receives from the

formerly interested “girls,” the speaker notes that “All of them touch him like some queer dis-
ease.” The implications of this line manifests that the injuries of this war have made the male
body strange, unfamiliar, undesirable, and unknowable. Owen further convolutes the image by
revoking the traditional correlation of touch by connecting it with dissociation. The use of the
term “queer” in such prominence demands further investigation of its importance at the time.
While the term “queer” has had a long history in the English language, it has, since the
early twentieth century, acquired new cultural associations which are at work under the surface
of Owen’ s text. ‘Disabled,’ written in 1917, also partakes in this cultural...