The War Poems of Wilfred Owen, Disabled and Mental Cases
English Coursework: Poetry Comparison
The War Poems of Wilfred Owen, 'Disabled' and 'Mental Cases'
The poems I have chosen to compare are the two I found the most powerful, these poems made me feel the emotions and situations that Owen was describing. Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 and died in 1918, just a week before the end of the First World War - the news of which reached his parents on the day of the armistice. His poetry is well known throughout the English speaking world, he is especially well known for the poetry he wrote towards the later years of the First World War.
Both of these poems seem to hold an underlying anti-war message, we can see this in the numerous references to the terrible waste of war. In 'Disabled'; '...before he threw away his knees.' - which is emphasised by 'He thought he'd better join - He wonders why', showing us how effortless it was to make his first mistake. The comparative references within 'Mental Cases' are less clear, however can be found; 'Carnage incomparable, and human squander Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.' - the horror was too much for the men, sending them mad, I feel an implication of waste.
Expanding on the anti-war message - we can find hints of bitterness towards the 'System', or government. In 'Disabled' we see, 'Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years' - a very sarcastic line, referring to the recruiting officers knowingly sending a minor to war - this pins some kind of hopeless blame onto them. 'Mental Cases' finishes off with a more generalised bitterness towards those responsible for the war, probably more vague to emphasise the subject of the poem, 'Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.'
One of the ways that the poems differ is, ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
Expanding on the anti-war message - we can find hints of bitterness towards the 'System', or government. In 'Disabled' we see, 'Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years' - a very sarcastic line, referring to the recruiting officers knowingly sending a minor to war - this pins some kind of hopeless blame onto them. 'Mental Cases' finishes off with a more generalised bitterness towards those responsible for the war, probably more vague to emphasise the subject of the poem, 'Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.'
One of the ways that the poems differ is, whereas 'Disabled' deals with loss of physical faculties, 'Mental Cases' deals with the loss of mental faculties - as their respective names obviously make out to describe. This difference in subject, directly affects the tone of the poem. In 'Disabled' the focus in on one individual, and the effects of losing physical faculties on their life - this makes 'Disabled' more "human" in feel than 'Mental Cases'. In 'Disabled' we see; 'spurted from his thigh', a very sexual sounding line, though replacing semen with blood, and also, '...he will never feel again how slim Girl's waists are...', a very personal and human feeling, again relating to sex - making it human. 'Mental Cases' deals with a group, and not even necessarily a group of people, but a disease. 'Who are these?', the opening line, deals with them as people and, with emphasis on 'these', as objects - or maybe victims, no longer quite human.
'Mental Cases' deals with a different kind of emotion, whereas 'Disabled' makes us feel the pain of losing the things described, making it much easier to sympathise with the subject, 'Mental Cases' deals with a subject most of us would rather not dwell on, so do not understand. But despite of this distancing, the poem enforces the feeling that what has happened to the 'Mental Cases', was not deserved by them - so making us want to take some kind of action.
'Mental Cases' places the reasons, or possible reasons, at the forefront - the purpose of the poem is probably to make them the least bit human it can, so increasing the feeling of waste and injustice. A possible purpose of this poem is to make us realise that these people are human, and that it is not of their own faults that they are in the states they are in. By extenuating the emphasis on how awful these people are, in such lines as; '...their eyeballs shrink tormented Back into their brains...', and 'Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked', the purpose may be to make them worse than reality so as to subject the reader to a sense of something like guilt.
So in conclusion, although, on a broader plane, the two poems deal with similar subject matter - on closer analysis we discover that their respective purposes and language provoke two quite different human emotions, one of understanding and therefor empathy, and one of repulse - then replaced by our now natural response to repulse, to change or improve the subject whom is repulsive in someway.