• Wilfred Owen
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Disabled
Context
World War One
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1914-1918
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Two group of countries in the war
World War One is a “total war”
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 The allies
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 The central powers
 All the men could call up to fight
 10 million men died in the
fighting
Wilfred Owen
• Wilfred Owen is the best known of the English
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poets who worte about their experiences of
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the First World War.
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• Owen was strongly influenced by another
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officer and poet called Siegfried Sassoon.
• He died in battle in November 1918, just seven
days before the armistice brought the war to
an end on 11th November 1918.
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First Draft
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Second Draft
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Disabled uses third-person omniscient narration
introduce the soldier through the non-descript pronoun
‘he’
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• No specific name/anonymity
demonstrates that the war
affected everyone, not just one
specific man, as well as
emphasising the idea of a Total
War.
• Has no identity,further
emphasises this soldier’s
isolation
In third-person narration, the narrator exists outside the events of the story, and relates the
actions of the characters by referring to their names or by the third-person pronouns he, she,
or they.
Omniscient /ɒmˈnɪsiənt/means "all-knowing," and likewise an omniscient narrator knows
every character’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations even if that character doesn’t reveal
any of those things to the other characters.
Sat-Static verb - Lack of vitality, hope, freedom
Alliteration of ‘w’:““Waiting” is a passive
verb which indicates that the man who confined
to wheelchair doesn’t have a choice; doesn’t
have freedom. His only option is to wait.
Anaphora: Sense of endlessness,
continuity
lightless of ‘grey’
‘dark’-Mental state
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He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.
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grey: a metaphor for his
pallour and suggests that
all his colour and youth
is gone.
sibilance: suggests a
cold temperature and
could be the sound of
shivering
Dark:metaphor or euphemism,dark is
ambiguous, he is waiting for nighttime or
for the eternal death.
Simile: even the happy cries of children sound sad
to him, like a mournful hymn in church.
Boy’s playing sound contrast with the solemn and
heavy tone of hymn. Because the young man can't
go out to enjoy himself, these sounds only remind
him of how tragically his life has changed.
Caesura：gives sense
of disjointedness that
reflects his physical
state. Life, youth, hope
being cut short by
Caesura-pause-a sense
of finality.
Swing：playfulness，youth
So：intensifier highlights the positive past
Capitalization：Emotional significance
Humanizing the time，more lively\vigorous
never-hopelessness，he laments the
loss of this kind of intimate pleasure
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About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees,
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,—
In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
Now he will never feel again how slim
Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,
All of them touch him like some queer disease.
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Metaphor:
growlamps=budding
flowerslively\vigorous/r
enewalable
atmosphere
Simile highlights his sense of isolation and
portrays this sense of distance because of
his injuries.
Enjambment：Mirrors
the endless of the flow of
memory-totally immerse
himself in memory
exaggeration "All" building
pathos over his isolation's
completeness.
Light-blue is a soft,
peaceful image that
juxtaposes the use of grey
in the previous stanza.
The alliteration of
‘g’emphasises the
excitement of flirtation
that the man used to
experience, making his
current state even more
harrowing
Dash：indicates an abrupt,
almost violent shift.
brutally disrupt the flow
of freedom
The soldier was such handsome teenager that
an artist desperately wanted to paint him
Polyptoton /ˌpɒlᵻpˈtoʊtɒn/ he looked even
younger than he actually was. just in the phase
of year, transformed from youthful to fragile
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There was an artist silly for his face,
For it was younger than his youth, last year.
Now, he is old; his back will never brace;
He's lost his colour very far from here,
Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,
And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race
And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.
leap-speed；spurted-quality；fast outburst of blood
end-stopped line:last year emphasises how
one year at war has changed him.
Alliteration of b：highlight the physical
disability of soldiers. Stiffness symbolizes how
absolutely he has become an old man, being
rich in awful experiences.
Metaphor: color=blood-clourless life-his youth,
vitality leaving him.
‘blood-smear’ was a trophy and a symbol of masculinity
The short sentences show his impulsiveness
and the fact he failed to think it through fully.
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One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg,
After the matches carried shoulder-high.
It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg,
He thought he’d better join. He wonders why.
Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts.
That’s why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,
Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,
He asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;
Sports are a kind of simulation of war, since
they involve working alongside teammates
toward a common goal and against a shared
opponent. In fact, war is often sold to young
men as a kind of game
caesura:a sense of
uncertainty\ambiguity\reckless decison of
joining the war.
The man was actually too young to enlist, the authorities were
‘smiling’ as they wrote down his false age, almost
sadistically as they know war won’t be what he’s imagined.
Owen paints an evil picture of these authorities, gleeful in
ruining yet more youth and innocence.
Listing
-overwhelming effects
-endlessness of fantasies
-youth=naive and vulnality
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Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.
Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,
And Austria's, did not move him. And no fears
Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts
For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon he was drafted out with drums and cheers
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‘Fear’ is
capitalised to
refer the
Germans and
Austria(the
power centre)
Naivety, he’s thought more
about kilts than the opposition
and dangers of war.
The repetition of the conjuncture ‘and’ is
polysyndeton which forms this a synthetic list,
which shows his excitement for war and the extent
of his naivety and corrupted misconception.
French for ‘spirit
of the body’, hints
at another
motivation for him
to enlist, he thought
it would offer him
the same sense of
camaraderie he got
from football
matches.
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Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.
Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.
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Short stanza-short lived glory
Capitalisation:greater importance placed on football performance than war
Polyptoton between "cheered" and "cheers" highlights the discrepancy
between the celebration he actually receives and the celebration he
expected to receive:
Contrast: drums and cheers-only a solemn man-loss of popularity,
belonging.
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Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
Tonight, he noticed how the women’s eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come
And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?
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• Anaphora/syndeyic listing:conveys a sense of never-ending,
as the soldier's sad life continues on and on.
• enjambment:mirrors how women’s eyes pass from him to
other strong men.-inferior and abandoned.
• cyclical structure/rhetorical question/repetition: hints at an
element of insanity and desperation in the man. The
rhetorical questions could also be seen as a euphemism for
the man crying out to die and be relieved from the torture of
his life.
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Wilfred Owen aimed to
convey ‘the pity of war’
in his poetry. How does he
try to do this in
“Disabled”?
 Wilfred Owen conveys ‘the pity of war’ in “Disabled”
by exploring its effects on a young soldier.
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 Owen himself had fought in the First World War.
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 The ‘pity of war’ comes from the idea that the man,
once a young and innocent teenager, made a mistake
and paid a price. Now, society is rejecting him. This
contributes to an overall underlying sadness provided by
the poem.