Wilfred Owen: How does Owen Vividly portray the aftermath and damage caused by the first world war in ‘Mental cases’?
Owen wrote this poem to express the damage done through war towards the humanity of the soldiers and men involved; he evokes empathy in the readers using techniques such as war imagery and personification.
In the first stanza, he makes us, as readers, feel distant from the ‘mental cases’, ‘these’, ‘they’ and ‘their’ all create a space between us and them; however he includes us in line eight, ‘we’ are mentioned (line 8). By not naming them, he makes a representation of what they lost (who they are and how you define them). He dehumanises them by creating horror through the use of violent images like ‘gouged’, where the reader gets an image of scooping out something, adding a dark aspect of torture. Syntax also contributes, he writes the word ‘twilight’ at the end of the question, which draws attention to the word, emphasizing the importance that it is the end of the day, suggesting that darkness is approaching. The men are described as animalistic. Owen gives us a picture of a ‘hellish’-belonging creature ‘baring teeth’ and ‘drooping tongues’. All these descriptions are given in the form of a question, asking ‘who are these?’ which makes the reader wonder what kind of monster-like people they are. Owen does this to emphasize the aftermath of war; it makes his next stanza, which answers the questions, much more powerful. The last question ‘who these hellish?’, not only tell us they look like they belong in hell but also goes back to the original question ‘who are these?’
The second stanza answers the questions and helps us understand why they are so damaged ‘these are men’, Owen recognises them as human, whose mentality was ‘ravished’ and destroyed by the ‘Dead’, the personification suggests they are still there, still people haunting them. Memory is also personified as it ‘fingers’ in their mind, suggesting they have no control over it, they are helpless. Both Repetition and alliteration are used ‘murders, /Multitudinous murders’ repeating the word, adding an
In the first stanza, he makes us, as readers, feel distant from the ‘mental cases’, ‘these’, ‘they’ and ‘their’ all create a space between us and them; however he includes us in line eight, ‘we’ are mentioned (line 8). By not naming them, he makes a representation of what they lost (who they are and how you define them). He dehumanises them by creating horror through the use of violent images like ‘gouged’, where the reader gets an image of scooping out something, adding a dark aspect of torture. Syntax also contributes, he writes the word ‘twilight’ at the end of the question, which draws attention to the word, emphasizing the importance that it is the end of the day, suggesting that darkness is approaching. The men are described as animalistic. Owen gives us a picture of a ‘hellish’-belonging creature ‘baring teeth’ and ‘drooping tongues’. All these descriptions are given in the form of a question, asking ‘who are these?’ which makes the reader wonder what kind of monster-like people they are. Owen does this to emphasize the aftermath of war; it makes his next stanza, which answers the questions, much more powerful. The last question ‘who these hellish?’, not only tell us they look like they belong in hell but also goes back to the original question ‘who are these?’
The second stanza answers the questions and helps us understand why they are so damaged ‘these are men’, Owen recognises them as human, whose mentality was ‘ravished’ and destroyed by the ‘Dead’, the personification suggests they are still there, still people haunting them. Memory is also personified as it ‘fingers’ in their mind, suggesting they have no control over it, they are helpless. Both Repetition and alliteration are used ‘murders, /Multitudinous murders’ repeating the word, adding an