Wilfred Owen's Use Of Diction In Disabled

Akin to many young soldiers fighting on the Western Front, Owen spent a large majority of his life transitioning from the horrors of the battlefield to recuperating in many different hospitals, the most prominent one being Craiglockhart hospital. Owen not only expresses physical suffering through his own eyes but through other comrades who have been wracked by the war. This is also closely followed by the hardship of family and friends who endure the pain of not knowing whether their beloved ones will return home. The use of diction and metaphors become a prominent feature in both Anthem For Doomed Youth as well as Disabled which emphasise the physical scars left by the war.
Physical suffering is accentuated by the permanent wounds and amputations
This is exemplified in ‘Disabled” where he once possessed a face ‘younger than youth’. This shows that the soldier was once an admired figure who was at the pinnacle of perfection with no bruises or blemishes to scar his flawless appearance. There was a time where he enjoyed a ‘blood smear down his leg’, an extended metaphor for his sports injury. This implies the fact that he was able to spare some blood, as though it held no great importance to him. In the past, the soldier was incredibly healthy, to the point that wounds were innocuous. Now, ‘he’s lost his colour very far from here’, a present tense displaying his current situation. This shows that he has lost too much blood to the point that he is unable to function properly as a normal human being. Bounded to a wheelchair, he becomes increasingly helpless and dependent on others to perform the simplest task of putting himself to bed. It causes the reader to feel empathy towards the veteran who is now permanently disabled. In comparison, Anthem For Doomed Youth portrays the timeshift through the use of stanzas. The poem is structured as a Petrarchan sonnet containing an octet which narrates the past while the sestet outlines the future. In the octet, the soldiers are faced with the wrath of ‘monstrous anger’, a hyperbole replicating the pain and anxiety
In ‘Disabled’ the veteran notices how the women’s eyes ‘passed from him to the strong men who were whole’. The ‘strong men’ act as a juxtaposition for his present condition, clarifying his fragile and weak state. Also the simile ‘like some queer disease’ make him seen like an outcast from society because he is unable to walk let alone carry out menial tasks. Confined to his wheelchair, he becomes increasing isolated, as more women avert their gazes to more physically able men. Conversely, in Anthem For Doomed Youth, the home front are more passive and contrite towards the soldiers’ disabilities. The boys express their anguish through the ‘holy glimmers of goodbyes’. The euphemism of goodbyes can be taken as giving a final farewell to the deceased. It can also be interpreted as a final farewell to the former lives of joy the soldier’s had prior to the war. In both poems, the soldiers are no longer treated as equals and can never fully integrate themselves back into society’s