An Essay Comparing the Ways in Which Owen Powerfully Portrays Physical and Mental Consequences of War in the Poems 'Disabled' and 'Mental Cases'
Compare the ways in which Owen powerfully portrays physical and mental consequences of war in the poems 'Disabled' and 'Mental Cases'
Wilfred Owen's poems 'Disabled' and 'Mental Cases' each portray very different aspects of war and its consequences. As their names suggest, 'Mental Cases' is about the psychological effects war had on soldiers, whereas 'Disabled' focuses more on the physical consequences of war. However, in both poems the physical and mental costs are all intertwined, and although they describe very different situations, in many ways the poems are alike in their portrayal of the consequences of war overall.
The first ways in which we can compare these poems is by their content, language and tone. In the poem 'Disabled', Owen states the subject's situation in the first line of the poem: "He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark" this line bluntly highlights to the reader that the subject is disabled, and is obviously very handicapped by his injury, because he cannot do anything except 'waiting for dark'. The narrator the informs the reader of exactly what the man's injuries are, in the same direct style - "Legless, sewn short at elbow." This emphasizes how starkly and immediately obvious the man's injuries would be to somebody who saw him. In comparison, the poem 'Mental Cases' starts with the line "Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?"; which is a far less straight forward line, and reflects how little was understood about the mental effects of war at the time. The physical consequences of war are not as prominent in 'Mental Cases', but they are still mentioned. The most powerful example is when the narrator describes how the shell-shocked soldiers appear: "their heads wear this hilarious, hideous, awful falseness of set-smiling corpses" and the reader comes to understand that their torment is so great they have lost control of their facial muscles. Owen uses the phrase "their faces wear" to show that their facial expressions are not a
Wilfred Owen's poems 'Disabled' and 'Mental Cases' each portray very different aspects of war and its consequences. As their names suggest, 'Mental Cases' is about the psychological effects war had on soldiers, whereas 'Disabled' focuses more on the physical consequences of war. However, in both poems the physical and mental costs are all intertwined, and although they describe very different situations, in many ways the poems are alike in their portrayal of the consequences of war overall.
The first ways in which we can compare these poems is by their content, language and tone. In the poem 'Disabled', Owen states the subject's situation in the first line of the poem: "He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark" this line bluntly highlights to the reader that the subject is disabled, and is obviously very handicapped by his injury, because he cannot do anything except 'waiting for dark'. The narrator the informs the reader of exactly what the man's injuries are, in the same direct style - "Legless, sewn short at elbow." This emphasizes how starkly and immediately obvious the man's injuries would be to somebody who saw him. In comparison, the poem 'Mental Cases' starts with the line "Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?"; which is a far less straight forward line, and reflects how little was understood about the mental effects of war at the time. The physical consequences of war are not as prominent in 'Mental Cases', but they are still mentioned. The most powerful example is when the narrator describes how the shell-shocked soldiers appear: "their heads wear this hilarious, hideous, awful falseness of set-smiling corpses" and the reader comes to understand that their torment is so great they have lost control of their facial muscles. Owen uses the phrase "their faces wear" to show that their facial expressions are not a