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Disabled Ioc Notes
Disabled Ioc Notes
Features
Background
“Mud, blood and sucked sugar stick.” H.B Yeats, a famous Irish poet, said
that Owen’s poetry boiled down to these 3 features. Mud, being a
metaphor for the depiction of the battlefield, on which mud was
omnipresent, blood being a metaphor for the violence and horror of the
battlefield, and sucked sugar stick being a representation of alliteration.
Rings true for this poem, Disabled, by Wilfred Owen
Written 1917 in Craiglockhart, published 1920
Robert Graves criticised him for the irregularity of his line lengths and for
daring to break with the poetic tradition which demanded a regular
pattern. Graves told Owen that, despite Disabled being a ‘damn fine poem’,
he must follow the rules.
Published posthumously, people who lost family and friends in the war
read it, but it drew criticism from others who said the poems failed to
discuss other aspects of war like camaraderie and acts of bravery.
There were millions of soldiers who returned from fighting in the plains
of mainland Europe with severe physically disabilities
Discusses a man who lost his limbs fighting in the war. Despite his
sacrifices for his country, few honour his actions.
Structure
The irregular rhyme scheme was used to represent the jolting walk of a
disabled man and to reflect how disrupted the man’s life has become
Purpose
Depict the horrifying physical effects of war on soldiers
Literary Devices
Predominantly juxtaposition, alliteration and metaphors
Themes
Loss of youth and masculinity
Horrors of War
Tone
Morose and depressed, due to the inclusion of words with highly negative
implications, such as dark and grey.
When the flashbacks are depicted however, the tone becomes nostalgic,
due to the juxtaposition in imagery between the recounts and the
soldier’s current situation
Audience
General public, to instill anti war feelings in them
This is shown through the use of Owens poetry in the 1960s in anti war
movements in the USA
Thesis Statements
1. How does Owen evoke a stark contrast between how the life of the
man before he went to war and after he returned
2. How women are shown to idealise the image of the soldier, as seen in
propaganda
3. How does Owen show the brutality of how the man lost his limbs?