Disabled William Owens Analysis
how does owen convey, in disabled, what the young man has lost in war?
Disabled by Wilfred Owen is a poem that describes a young soldier who has been disabled by war, having lost both his legs and an arm. His future consists of recovering in an institute where he has nothing to do but reflect on what his life once was and what he has lost, such as his beauty, youth and independence. The poem reveals a set of changes in the man’s life from pre-war, when he was a young handsome football hero, to post war, where he is now an institutionalised disabled soldier.
The first stanza introduces us to the disabled soldier and establishes his great physical and psychological loss. Owen sets a depressed scene by using words such as dark, ghastly and grey to convey that this soldier cannot shake the traumatising images of war, hence, informs the audience that the soldier has lost all sense of positivity. The phrase “waiting for the dark” indicates how the soldier feels he has nothing positive to look forward to in life and is constantly waiting for night time to escape the traumatisation he suffers. The soldier is described as being “in a wheeled chair”, representing the loss of his independence. An image of the soldier’s physical impairments was created for the audience when Owen bluntly described him as a young man who is “legless [and] sewn short at the elbow”. Furthermore, the soldier cannot handle hearing boys playing in the park as they remind him of a younger, more cheerful self. He labelled the sound of the boys as “a saddening hymn”, symbolising his misery. The personification of sleep as being mothering to the soldier demonstrates that the only thing shielding the soldier from the boy’s happy voices and his horrible memories is sleep.
The second stanza demonstrates the abrupt changes in the soldier’s life before and after the war. Initially this stanza describes a time when the town was joyful, romantic, and dream like. However, this was before the war, and is
Disabled by Wilfred Owen is a poem that describes a young soldier who has been disabled by war, having lost both his legs and an arm. His future consists of recovering in an institute where he has nothing to do but reflect on what his life once was and what he has lost, such as his beauty, youth and independence. The poem reveals a set of changes in the man’s life from pre-war, when he was a young handsome football hero, to post war, where he is now an institutionalised disabled soldier.
The first stanza introduces us to the disabled soldier and establishes his great physical and psychological loss. Owen sets a depressed scene by using words such as dark, ghastly and grey to convey that this soldier cannot shake the traumatising images of war, hence, informs the audience that the soldier has lost all sense of positivity. The phrase “waiting for the dark” indicates how the soldier feels he has nothing positive to look forward to in life and is constantly waiting for night time to escape the traumatisation he suffers. The soldier is described as being “in a wheeled chair”, representing the loss of his independence. An image of the soldier’s physical impairments was created for the audience when Owen bluntly described him as a young man who is “legless [and] sewn short at the elbow”. Furthermore, the soldier cannot handle hearing boys playing in the park as they remind him of a younger, more cheerful self. He labelled the sound of the boys as “a saddening hymn”, symbolising his misery. The personification of sleep as being mothering to the soldier demonstrates that the only thing shielding the soldier from the boy’s happy voices and his horrible memories is sleep.
The second stanza demonstrates the abrupt changes in the soldier’s life before and after the war. Initially this stanza describes a time when the town was joyful, romantic, and dream like. However, this was before the war, and is