Wilfred Owen poem; 'Disabled' analysis

"Disabled" is one of Owen's most disturbing and affecting poems. It was written while he was convalescing at Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh after sustaining injuries on the battlefield, and was revised a year later. This work was the subject of Owen's initial relationship to poet Robert Graves. Owen wrote to his mother on October 14th, 1917, saying, "On Sat. I met Robert Graves...showed him my longish war-piece 'Disabled'...it seems Graves was mightily impressed and considers me a kind of Find!! No thanks, Captain Graves! I'll find myself in due time." A few days later Graves expanded his critique, telling Owen it was a "damn fine poem" but said that his writing was a bit "careless". Graves's comment may derive from the fact that there are many irregularities of stanza, meter, and rhyme in "Disabled".

In the first stanza the young soldier is depicted in a dark, isolated state as he sits in his wheelchair. Almost immediately the reader learns that the soldier has lost his legs in a battle. Owen casts a pall over this young man with the depiction of sad voices of boys echoing throughout the park, perhaps as they echoed on the battlefield. The voices throw him back into his memories, which is what will constitute the rest of the poem until the last few lines. Words such as "waiting" and "sleep" reinforce the sense that this soldier's life is interminable to him now.

In the second stanza the soldier reminisces about the old days before the war. He conjures up sights and sounds of lamps and dancing girls before he bitterly remembers that he will not get to experience a relationship with a woman now; they look at him as if he has a "queer disease". It is not explicitly stated that the soldier, like Ernest Hemingway's Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises, suffers from impotency deriving from his war accident, but it is possible that this is also the case. The soldier feels emasculated, ignored, almost betrayed by women.

In the third stanza the recollections continue, with the soldier musing on the happy days of yore. He used to be young and handsome and an artist wanted to draw his face. Last year he possessed youth, he says, but he no longer does - the soldier "lost his colour very far from here / Poured it down shell-holes until veins ran dry". Another famous WWI poet, C. Day Lewis, said this line possesses "deliberate, intense understatements – the brave man's only answer to a hell which no epic words could express" and is "more poignant and more rich with poetic promise than anything else that has been done during this century." In the fourth stanza the boy also recalls that he was a football hero, and that once a "blood-smear" on his leg sustained in a game was a badge of honor. This is in stark contrast to his war wounds, which are shameful. He explains the almost casual way he decided to go to war – after a game, when he was drunk, he thought he ought to enlist. Swayed by a compliment and a girl named Meg, his justification for going to war illustrates his youthful ignorance and naïveté is in full effect.

In the fifth stanza he says that he lied about his age to get into the military, and gave nary a thought to Germans or fear. All he thought about was the glory and the uniforms and the salutes and the "esprit de corps". This young man could have been almost any young man from any country involved in the war, who, possessing such youth and lack of worldly wisdom, did not think too deeply about what war really meant and what could happen to his life. Owen is obviously sympathetic to the soldier's lack of understanding, but he is also angry about "the military system that enabled the soldier to enlist through lying about his age". Owen is careful to balance "the immaturity of the soldier...with anger at the view of war as glamorous, a view held by both the soldier before the war and by much of the public throughout."

In the sixth stanza a curious encounter occurs on the boy's way to war – one man who is cheering him on is "solemn" and takes the time to inquire about his soul. It does not seem like the boy took the time to wonder too deeply about this at the time, but the encounter is a foreshadowing of the difficulties to come.

In the seventh stanza the soldier comes back to the present, realizing the bleakness of his future. He knows that he will be in and out of institutes and hospitals, and will have to suffer through the pity of those in power that put him in danger in the first place. What exacerbates his situation is the continued slights from women, who look past him like he is invisible to men that are "whole". The poem ends on a sad and mundane note as the young man wonders why "they" do not come and put him to bed. It is a reminder that he will have to have others do things for him from now on. His days of autonomy, and, of course, glory, are clearly over. The poem is about one soldier, but what makes it so compelling and relevant is its universal quality.

Journey's End; Language Analysis

Dramatic irony is created when the audience learn something interesting from one character that another character doesn’t know about. In this play there are many examples but the most striking is when Hibbert complains to Stanhope of his "neuralgia", the audience is already half aware of what Stanhope’s response will be.

A key dramatic effect is contrast. Sherriff uses this technique to guide the audience’s response to characters and actions. For example, when the tall and slim Stanhope first appears on set, he is with chubby red-faced Trotter. This emphasises the heroic physical attributes of Stanhope and helps us to understand the boyish love Raleigh has for him.

Siegfried Sassoon - Died of Wounds

His wet white face and miserable eyes 
Brought nurses to him more than groans and sighs: 
But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fell 
His troubled voice: he did the business well. 

The ward grew dark; but he was still complaining 
And calling out for ‘Dickie’. ‘Curse the Wood! 
‘It’s time to go. O Christ, and what’s the good? 
‘We’ll never take it, and it’s always raining.’ 

I wondered where he’d been; then heard him shout, 
‘They snipe like hell! O Dickie, don’t go out... 
I fell asleep ... Next morning he was dead; 
And some Slight Wound lay smiling on the bed.

Sassoon was a brave and well- respected officer. He won the military cross for courage and fought at several battles, yet he also detested the slaughter and the misconduct of the war by generals and politicians. Sassoon's poems are aimed to tell the truth about the war that he had fought in. He used a plain, direct style, often bringing in soldiers slang. Also a pattern of sharp lines often leads to a ' knock - out blow' in the last verse. Died of the Wounds was based on a dying soldier who Sassoon had seen in a hospital near the Somme in July 1916.

This line indicates that the nurses came to him more because of his pain and the look of his face. He describes the physical condition of the dying soldier. By saying " he did the business well", highlights that he was a good soldier who was in the thick of the war. Some people said at the time of ww1 that people who came back wounded are looked up to as heroes of the war. Sassoon concentrates on sounds to show that the soldier is dying in a troubled way, that he was not happy and that it wasn't a peaceful way to die.

To warn one of the soldiers Sassoon says, " O Dicke, don't go out". The phrase " Slightly Wounded" describes the dying soldier as a casualty of the war. At the very end of the poem he uses the word " smiling " to emphasises that the wounded solider is at peace at last. In comparison, Wilfred Owen also fought in the www1 like Sassoon knows the dangers, terror and suffering that war causes. I feel that the poem benefits from Sassoon's experiences in the war, as he knows the truth about war. In this poem Sassoon aimed to upset people who glorified war. Sassoon in the poem has the ability to use very few words but they say a lot in them.

This poem emphasises the physical horror of WW1 where thousands of soldiers died of wounds and blood pour. 

Journey's End: Character Analysis:


Sherriff shows the diversity of people within the play.

Mason - A slightly lower class chef. Cooks for the commanders and isn't really educated. He is sometimes used as a dramatic devise, bringing the audience down to a completely different level when he worries about the fact that he was brought apricots rather than pineapple chunks. He is almost a comedy role, taking on a totally different side of the war, and almost making it seem funny and stupid that you worry about that sort of thing; the fact that they are in the middle of the First World War and he's worried about pineapples.
Stanhope - Is in charge, he's bossy and known as a major drinker. However Osbourne is a big fan of him, defending him, saying he's the best company commander in the army and works harder than anyone else. He's shocked when he first sees Raleigh questioning him quite harshly, 'how did you get here?', and as a result of this becomes slightly dismissive, goes quiet and perhaps slightly uncomfortable because he recognises this boy, and for some reason which we learn later on in the play, he doesn't want Raleigh to see what he's really like. Possibly because of his sister.

'She doesn't know that if I went up those steps into the front line - without being doped in whisky - I'd go mad with fright.'
'I knew I'd go mad if I couldn't break the strain, I couldn't bare being fully conscious all the time.'
These two quotes that Stanhope tells Osbourne are extremely important and a turn in the play, showing what the war was like from a man who was regarded as one of the bravest men out on the front. How must the others have coped?! We see Stanhope as a strong man, brave and completely in control the whole time, but from those two quotes we learn that he's still as terrified as everyone else. You could almost say he is a good actor, covering up his emotions, along with a lot of whisky washed down with it. It is funny what a war can do to a man, as Stanhope tells Osbourne, he promised himself that he'd go into the war and be strong and brave and come back fit and healthy for his girl. Yet once he got there he couldn't go through the day not being slightly drunk during some of it.
Osbourne - a much older man than anyone else in the company, given the nickname 'uncle' by everyone else he's seen as a fatherly figure and perhaps a role model. Second in command to Stanhope, he could be more intelligent since he was a teacher but has little to non-experience compared to Stanhope and believes that wholeheartedly. He comes across as a nice man, who sees the best in people, no matter the circumstances or situation and in this case, war. He looks after Stanhope when he gets drunk and rowdy, worrying about Raleigh and the contents of the letters he might send home.