What ideas are being explored in Wilfred Owens Disabled?

How does the poet

skilfully use language and structure to get across his ideas?
Wilfred Owen was a English poet who served during WWI. His poem Disabled depicts a
soldier who has lost a number of limbs in war and is subsumed with gloom and depression.
The soldier was once a youthful athlete who is now reduced to the shell of his former self,
both mentally and physically. Owen uses very effective imagery, focusing on both the often
glamourized depiction of war and the reality of war. Most of Owens war poetry is based on
personal experiences and he presents an anti-war perspective of where he is highly critical of
the UK government and recruitment officers who hid the reality of war from society and
glamourized it through propaganda posters and recruitment campaigns.
One of the themes in Disabled is the psychological and physical effects war has on soldiers.
The protagonist demonizes his post-wawr present using visual imagery, irony and smilies.
The young veteran lost his legs in war, disabling him from ever playing football again. He
describes himself as helpless and legless. The poem starts with the depressing imagery of a
young man sitting in a wheelchair, dependent on nurses and others to take care of him. Owen
uses flashback and juxtaposition in the first stanza to contrast the depressing and harsh effects
of war. He juxtaposes the happy and optimistic then, with the depressing and dark reality of
now. He contrasts his warm and glowing pre-war past with his ghastly and grey postwar prsent, thus emphasizing his depressed state. The use of plosive alliteration in ghastly
and grey creates a harsh tone and emphasizes how little there is to celebrate in his post-war
life. The reader links his use of grey with a great void and sadness and this helps us pity the
protagonist and recognise his sorrow. In contrast, Owen uses light blue in stanza two to
reflect a much more joyful pre-war past. The use of light colours and soft sounds is
effectively contrasted against the use of dark colours and harsh sounds in stanza one,
emphasizing the disheartening post-war present.
He can no longer feel again how slim girls waists are, or how warm their subtle hands.
This not only shows his physical loss, but also his psychological scars. He regrets losing his
legs and joining the army as he knows that he will never be able to dance or hold a woman
again. Owen juxtaposes the depressing post-war existence with his pre-war life by
romanticising the protagonists happy past. An example of where Owen romanticises the past
is when glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees. His use of personification with budded
adds to the romantic mood. Budded has connotations of new life and regeneration, whereas
legless is about loss and decay. In stanza three, Owen uses colour to describe vivid images.
For example, leap of purple spourted from his thigh and hes lost his colour very far from
here. These images suggest a lack of regeneration and how his life has been cut short. The
budded image is surrounded by these dark and bleak images suggesting that regeneration is
a thing of the past and something that cannot be reclaimed; the present outweights the past.
Owen uses irony to get across his message of the reality of war to the reader in the poem. The
young soldier used to be an athlete who was part of a football team. He compares his glory
and fame achieved after the football match to the less-glorified return from war. A bloorsmear down his leg, after the matches, carried shoulder-high, shows how the injured soldier
once felt prooud to be injured after a football game. However, it is ironic as he was seriously
injured after war, and instead of feeling proud, he is ashamed and depressed. The soldier was
not honoured or rewared for serving his country. Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
thanked him. Is contrasted with the drums and cheers when he left for war. The contrast
between his expectations of war and the grim reality of war make his past life seem more
enjoyable and almost idealised. There is also a tone of bitterness here with how society
celebrates a football injury but a war injury is treated like a queer disease. This is a
condemnatory simile that shows how shallow society is and highlights Owens anger and
bitterness.

The soldier struggles with adjusting to civilian life as he fights with both phsyical and
psychological post-war trauma. He has lost his colour very far from here, suggests that his
past life is a long way away from his present life and can no longer be reclaimed. Poured it
down shell-holes until veins ran dry, is also a metaphor that shows his loss of youth and
vitality. The protagonist is dry because he has lost a lot of blood from war but it also suggests
that he is hollow inside and will never regain his past vitality and joy in life. Poured it down
reflects how his choice to join the war was wasteful and seems like a sacrifice, resulting in
feeling regret for his foolish decision. Also, poured gives us the impression of how much
was wated and how much was lost at war, giving us asense of the enormity of what he has
lost. Similarly, the theme of the loss of youth is shown when he repeats younger and
youth in for it was younger than his youth. This line is also juxtaposd to now he is old,
which emphasizes his past, happier youth. The adverb now suggests how quickly your
fortunes can change. The structure of these lines- juxtaposing youth with old age also
highlights how quickly ones life and be reversed. This also creates pathos in the reader.
Moreover, Owen uses a lot of imagery in the poem to emphasize the horrors of war. His
graphic images of lost limbs and scenes of the battle field show how war can both physically
and psychologically affect the young soldiers in battle. The soldier is legless, sewn short at
elbow. This is a blunt, shocking description of the soldiers physical state which highlights
the brutality of war. The use of legless, also reminds the protagonist of why he signed up
for war- because he had drunk a peg, which is a colloquial term for being drunk. This will
be a constant regret for him as he is haunted by the fact that he is now legless. He can never
escape his past folly. Owen also uses blood imagery in the third stanza, graphically describing
how his life bled out of him: a leap of pruple spurted from his thigh. These lines not only
reflect how horrific the miliary injuries were but may also have some sexual connotations to
them.
The soldier has lost confidence after the war and is convinced that through the eyes of others,
he is no longer attractive or heroic and has lost his manhood. This is the psychological aspect
of post war trauma. In the last stanza, he repeats about the soldiers loss. He noticed how the
womens eyes passed from him to the strong men that were whole. He no longer sees himself
as whole anymore, referring to both his emotional state and physical, limbless state. This
image contrasts with how in his past he imagined himself as a strong and heroic soldier. He
never dremat going to war would result in his weak and helpless self. It is also highly ironic
that he went to war to please his Meg and to be seen as heroic, yet war has resulted in the
opposite happening. The poem foreshadows the mans bleak future ahead and repetition is
used in the last stnza to show helplessness. Owen uses listing in stanza five to show
everything he has lost- none of his dreams come true and he can never attain them now. His
world is now grey and dark, smart salutes and care of arms emphasizes how he has
no arms. This effectively creates sympathy.
On the other hand, Owen portrays young mn as foolish in the poemm; however he also
criticizes the army recruiting officers by being dishonest about the reality o war. The soldier
was motivated to join the war by his own pride and vanity. We see that vanity may have been
a reason for him signing up in stanza four, when someone had said hed look a god in kilts.
Being young, the soldier was nave and he believed the propaganda of how going to war was
heroic and glorious. He went to war to impres the girls, to please his Meg. Although this
shows how he did not sign up to join the war for ideological resasons, every reason was
selfish, attemptious and done to improve his life rather than others. We may feel a little
repelled by this. Hed drunk a peg, the recruiting officers smiled as they wrote his lie,
aged nineteen years. Our criticism now turns to the recruiting officers who we blame for
allowing a young drunk boy to sign up for war. Their smiling faces imply they knew what
they were doing and it adds a sinister edge to the recruitment process. Owen contrasts the
young mans pre-war immaturity with te tragic and excessive maturity that he attained after
experiencing the brutal horrors of war. He blames the recuriting officers as at such a young

age, he was ignorant about war and did not understand the dangers and effects of it. He
personifies fear, implying how we should have been aware of this and how paralysing
fear would be. The readers response changes- we blame the protagonist for his foolishness
but soon realise that the blame may be channelled twoards the experienced recruiting officers
and the UK government instead.
Loss of innocence is seen when Owen uses alliteration to show the boys having fun, in
contrast to the isolation of the wounded soldier. Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn |
voices of play and pleasure after day. The smilie shows how the sound of cheerful boys is
like sad music in his head. Owen contrasts the saddening hymn to the more joyful play and
pleasure of the boys to create a dull and depressing post-war atmosphere. The boys can be
seen to represent innocence and Owens use of contrast with the previous lines show how the
protagonist had to grow up quickly and lose his boyhood innocence suddenly. He also uses
repetition with voices and alliteration with play and pleasure. Repetition puts emphasis
on the sounds of happiness and joy, effectively contrasting with the loneliness portrayed in the
first few lines. The use of hymn suggests a solemn mood, adding to the conotation of
sadness in the stanza. The gloomy images focus on a lack of emotion, gaining symphathy
from the reader.
Owen is sympathetic towards the soldiers who served during battle and returned feeling
lifeless and emotionally damaged. The theme of how wwar is unpredicatable can be seen in
the poem. The war can take away naivety and innocence- it forced young soldiers to grow up
in less than a year. He will spend a few sick years in Institutes, and do what things the rules
consider wise. In these lines, we see that the young man has become dependent on others
and is left helpless. His helplessness is also emphasized when the poem ends with the
rhetorical questions why dont they come?. Ending with an interrogative is a bleak way to
end the poem as it suggests there is no answer to his unhappy, depressed state of mind and
this makes it a hopeless ending and shows war to be grim, offering neither hope nor answers.
The protagonist has lost his limbs and as a result, he feels as though a part of his life is
missing. Owen emphasizes this idea through using an irregular stanza structure and
inconsistent rhyme to reflect his turmoil. The use of irregular stanzas mirror the theme of
disability as it is as if irregular stanzas are imcomplete, just like the protagonists body.
I think this poem is successful and conveys Owens views on war. Owen does not name the
soldier, suggesting that the poem refers to all soldiers at war. He shows the true reality of war,
the antithesis of what propaganda proposed it to be like. In particular, his use of blood
imagery creates strong emotions that causes the reader to sympathize with the injured
soldiers. I feel that the soldiers legs are a symbol of youth, a time of happiness and joy in
which he had to give up. The war disabled him both mentally and physically, leaving him
trapped and helpless. As a result. Owens tells us to not take freedom for granted and to
treasure our childhood.