In the second stanza, the feeling is more cheerful, but as you go on this dies down, until there is total misery. ‘About this time the Town used to swing so gay’, he remembers what it was like before the start of the war, when he was able to walk and look at people without he being rejected. ‘And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim’, the girls used to look at him and he used to look at them, this is when the girls were not frightened to of his appearance, and they did not openly refuse him for whole men. 'Glow-lamps' and 'girls glanced’, these are both effective uses of alliteration. 'Before he threw away his knees', shows that he can’t even remember why he joined the army. This is probably the way Owen feels at the time, he does not know what made him join, but whatever, the reason he is very angry, he feels as though it was some stupid reason. 'Now he will never feel again how slim/Girls' waists are', showing not only the physical loss of his arm, but also the psychological scars as the soldier knows he will be rejected by women from now on. Owen must also feel that he will be lucky if he gets home, and in the end he does not he dies five days before the armistice. There were no women at the front line; he has not felt them for such a long time. In Exposure, the men have no time to think about women, instead they are waiting for something to happen ‘Watching we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire’, the men hear something in the silence, they are so anxious to fight that they hope that it is something to kill. He also describes the war as a long lost thing. ‘Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.’ Because there is no action, the soldiers think they must have come to the wrong war; this can not be the same war, which everyone is talking about, where everyone is dying. This is in contrast to Disabled, where the war was so dangerous, that the young boy lost his arms and legs. ‘What are we doing here’, Owen does not see a purpose of the people involved in this poem being at the front line. He shows that in some places on the field there was no need for soldiers, but if there were gaps, then the Germans would have got through. The comparison is that here he wants action, in Disabled he does not. The second stanzas show that there are two lives of a soldier, either one so far back, they belong to another war, or one so intense that lives or even worse limbs can be lost. In Disabled, the second stanza has a certain rhyme, the seventh and the twelfth line do not fit in rhythm with anything else, the eighth, the tenth and the thirteenth line rhyme, also the ninth and the eleventh line rhyme. In Exposure the sixth line rhymes with the ninth line and the seventh line rhymes with the eighth line. In these rhymes the vowel sound changes, but the constantan sound stays the same.
In the third stanza is a little bit about the past, present and future it shows how time quickly chances for the solider now that he is back from war. 'Younger than his youth', the reversal is complete. The implication is that his face is now older than his youth. He feels as though his time on the world has ended, as though he is older and needs more care than the other youths that went to war with him. Even though he would like to live again, as long as he got his missing limbs back. This is an exact contrast to Exposure, ‘The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow…’ in this the soldiers want war (or life) to end as it so tedious and boring. The young man is Disabled is feeling miserable, 'He's lost his colour very far from here', this shows how he has become dull. This could be because he has lost his colour at war; he was so scared that his skin became pale. The war seemed like hell, which is still remembered within his memories. The soldiers in Exposure have also lost colour, but with a differing meaning, ‘shivering ranks of grey’, the rain is coming to attack them again, continuously, without taking a break in the day. The grey symbolises the uniforms of the German army, which they were actually at war with, not the rain. In addition, this constant blunder of rain could have been as if the Germans attacking, wave after wave after wave. There is not much imagery created here, but the moods are depressing in both poems, and these are clearly shown. These two stanzas show that the face of death can frighten even the strongest of soldiers. In addition, all soldiers want life to return to normal, and if it can’t they give up on life.
The fifth stanza is short but has a message, 'Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal', the boy recalls the image of the football match earlier, which implied that he was carried from the field shoulder-high, possibly as the result of scoring the winning goal. Here, despite having achieved far more, for far greater a loss than a 'blood- smeared leg', the crowd's reception is more hollow. ‘Only a solemn man who brought him fruits’, ‘then enquired about his soul’, this would be the priest that has come to mourn the lose of his limbs, he would come alone, talking about how the boy did he right thing, by fighting for his country and the sacrifice was well worth it, to save the women and children back home. In Exposure the seventh stanza also focuses on some aspect of God, ‘for God’s invincible spring our love is made afraid’. In this line they say God will never bring spring, they will have to suffer the winter, until they die. ‘For the love of God seems dying’, this can have two separate meanings; does God not love them, or have they lost faith in God, this view is in Disabled, where the boy may have lost faith in God, as he has lost his limbs. However I think this line applies to both poems ‘therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,’ they died to preserve England, what ever the conditions were. They were born only to die. Once they had served their purpose they were tossed aside.
The final stanza of the poem is about the future and the end of the day. ‘And do what the rules consider wise’, he will stay in the institute for the rest of his life, and will have to follow their rules, he is so helpless that he can not do anything for himself, so he will have do as the workers say. This line is similar to the first line of the last stanza in Exposure ‘tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us’; they will freeze and will stay in the same place forever. Disabled has 'And take whatever pity they may dole’, the nurses are paid to look after him, they do not do it out of the goodness of their heart, they will show him pity for as much as they have been paid, no more. 'Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes, Passed from him to the strong men that were whole', repeating again the loss of the soldier, this time in his attractiveness to the opposite sex. Exposure also uses the sense to eyes in the last stanza, but differently ‘All their eyes are ice’, showing that as the diggers dig up their bodies, the sight will scare them. The young man in Disabled is not ‘Whole' implying that he is incomplete, less than a man. Ironically he is now dependent on young women to put him to bed, in contrast with his pre-war virile manhood when he could expect to take women to bed. The last four words are the most emotional of all, '...Why don't they come', shows how helpless he was, the weather is cold, and he is all alone and the workers of the institute do not take him inside. This also shows how insignificant he was, as his not remembered. This line can be linked to the recruiting poster of 1914, 'Will they never come?' The soldiers were always expecting reinforcements to come and help them in the war. This soldier is also fighting a war, not against the Germans, but against himself, the mental scars that have been inflict upon him, at the loss of his limbs; the help his is expecting at the time are the nurses. The last image in Exposure is horrifying, as you can see men frozen in ice, while Disabled creates a mournful ending, with him sitting alone, surrounded by complete strangers. The metre in both poems seems to slow down, to almost a stop in both poems towards the end.
