Analysis Of Main Themes In The Poem “Disabled” By Wilfred Owen
Although Owen acknowledges and exposes the devastating consequences of World War One, he also highlights clearly the enormous sense of injustice for young people in the aftermath of conflict. By doing this through Owen´s choices of language, use of flashback and the pregnant choice of the romantic form of poetry he evidently depicts the melancholy futile life of soldier rehoming from war. Furthermore in Robert Frost blank verse his emotive, frank and devoid of emotions depiction of the premature death of an innocent child demonstrates to the reader how easy life can be extinguished through unjust and exploitation circumstances specifically in a social inmobile society.
Firstly the use of the rhyme ABAB in the second stanza is used to make the flow intense as the biggest war in all times (World War One) has just occured and millions of people died and were wounded by the biggest war of all times, which is ironic because the main theme of this poem is anti-war however he writes about war. In addition, Owen makes the poem harsh to emphasis that this boy's life is always going to be like a war (battle), which implies the futility of life as he lost his liberty. This is epitomised in the quotation “in the old times, before he threw away his knees”, shows how the lost of his legs is also the loss of his youth.
The stereotype of men in society is based upon their physical strength, not there intellectual or emotional capability. Owen is frustrated because he doesn´t understand why teenagers (or children) only 14, 15, 16 years old have to go to war. He makes this type of criticisms in his poems so one day they get published and people start realising the miserable life that children had to suffer (exploitation of children) in those times and how women were not the only ones who were excluded from society (didn't have any kind of rights), men in in those times has a really important job that was to maintain their family by bringing money home however if they were disabled they couldn't work because the majority of the works in those times were physical jobs, and would therefore be isolated from society which is indicated and repeats the theoretical question, “Why don't they come”. Wilfred Owen in the phrase “in the old times” uses a hyperbole as he is trying to tell us that this man thinks that his life has past on because he feels old however there is a juxtaposition because he is only eighteen years old so he is basically a teenager not an old man that in a few days he is going to die, he has a life ahead. So in conclusion the man that is disabled thinks that know he is useless in society because he thought that after war people were going to see him as as a hero however they now look at him as an outcast of society.
In the third stanza of “Disabled” Owen again presents the futility of life when exposing the superficiality of women and society. We can epitomise in the quotation “All of them touch him like some queer disease”. The use of the simile “like” in this stanza shows how the soldier is remembering and comparing the days before the war and his relationship with women that he will not get to experience anymore which reinforces the fact that life is futile and that all the wonderful things he had to live has disappeared only because he is disabled. Now they see him as an outcast of society and a disease. He feels emasculated, ignored by women and society. The girls turned him like a “queer”disease: the word “queer” had started to being used to describe homosexuals, so to think his social standing is the same as those considered in those times to be an unnatural insult, is extremely revealing on how people (the society) think of a disabled man who is incapable of doing things by his own because he can't move.
We can see that the soldier is rudely brought back to reality as he remembers how out of the many people who had applauded his departure, few had been thee on his return, and all his accomplishments in the war were forgotten as instead of encouraging his deeds, the people pitied his los, and the fame and glory he had expected were denied him. This is clear when Wilfred Owen says “Women's eyes passed from him”, suggests that women only care about their strength and good looking of men than their intellectual or their emotions. This quotation indicates that people don't want to acknowledge what happened in war and just want to continue with their lives to forget the damage that caused the war, so they don´t stop for a minute and realise that this man is a hero that saved the countries life and he should be recognised, however, society describes or thinks that disabled people are monsters, kind of a disease and an outcast of society.
The word “disease” rainforces how people think of disabled man in those times. The word “disease” means an illness, caused by an infection or a failure of health rather than by an accident, so to think that a person is a disease is like saying he is a monster that you can't get near him because he is contagious and he will bring you horrible things except of positiveness which brings us back to our main point of futility of life (the poem is telling us that if a man wasn't strong or couldn't work in a physical job because they were incapable (had any type of physical disability) they were useless in society and no one wanted to be near them) so we can infer how cruel the society was in those times and how the author tries to change the mentality of the society of disabled people.
In the quote “All of them” rainforces the word “All” (plural) which suggests that everyone in society sees him as an invisible person which is meaningless and useless in society which again reinforces the evilness of humanity beings and how people only care about the perfect stereotypical man.
