Mental Cases
Wilfred Owen
Mental Cases
CHARACTER
In Stanza 1 who is Owen describing?
• The poem is narrated by someone who is
observing returned soldiers who have been
placed in a mental institution.
• The subjects of the poem are objectified by the opening
references to ‘these’ and ‘they’. Their humanity has
been stripped from these unnamed patients and the
abruptness of the opening rhetorical question
challenges the speaker to think about what caused
them to be in this condition.
• Their nameless state is symbolic. It makes them
representational of those whose mental capacity is
shattered by their wartime experiences.
What do these men look like?
• He describes the men as “shadows”, rocking quietly
in a darkened corner during twilight. Their tongues
hang from their mouths while saliva dribbles down
their faces. Their expression appears tormented and
they have deep worry lines etched into their faces.
This is a result of sleepless nights and the endless
memories of war which haunt them.
What language techniques are used to
create this image?
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METAPHOR / ARCHAIC LANGUAGE
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“Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial Shadows”
•
The narrator is asking (rhetorical question) why these once strong,
proud men have been reduced to rocking in a corner like
madmen. He compares them to shadows – grey, invisible and a
poor shell of their former selves. Purgatory also implies that they are
stuck in a living hell. Even though they are alive they are tormented
by their memories. They have withdrawn into an inner hellish place
which overwhelms all else. This image is emphasised through the
symbolic use of “twilight”. This is a time of day which is the transition
from day to night and reinforces the situation these men are in –
caught between life and death / day and night.
•
The archaic language of ‘Wherefore’ lends Biblical weight to the
moral implications of their condition. These ‘purgatorial shadows’
rock in a metaphorical hellish existence.
What language techniques are used to
create this image?
Simile / Word Inversion
“Drooping tongues from jaws
that slob their relish, Baring teeth
that leer like skulls’ tongues wicked?
• Value-laden diction and word inversion heightens the impact
of the repellent image of bared teeth and aggressive manner,
• The simile links the living with the dead, emphasising their
separation from normalcy as well as hinting at how war has
made them ‘wicked’.
• Their mannerisms and tortured physical condition causes
these men to appear almost as animals. ‘Drooping tongues’
and slavering jaws conveys their dehumanised appearance.
War has stolen their humanity.
What language techniques are used to
create this image?
Metaphor / Personification
• “What slow panic gouged these
chasms round their fretted
sockets? Ever from their hair and
through their sweated palms
misery swelters”
• The “chasms” around the eyes of
the soldiers are a result of endless
sleepless nights and mental
anguish. “Misery” has also been
personified. The almost sweat out
the pain they are consumed by.
Comment on the use of personification in
Stanza 2. What image is created here?
• “Memory fingers in their hair of
murders”
• The soldiers are so distraught by
the memories of people they
have killed and of the deaths of
their comrade's that they try to
physically tear the memories
from their head. Their memories
are compared to fingers poking
and prodding them but which
they can’t remove.
What is meant by “multitudinous murders”?
Comment on the repetition of “murder”
• The unknown ‘these’ have been identified as those whose
minds have been ‘ravished’. The ravisher is death itself,
personified and capitalised as the cause of what has
happened to these men’s minds. Wars ‘Dead’ have attacked
their psyches, making them another casualty of war. They have
been robbed of innocent slumbers, now plagued by
nightmarish recall.
• Owen borrows a Shakespearean phrase (allusion) from
Macbeth, to emphasise the mass death these men have been
forced to witness. ‘Multitudinous murders’ is made more ominous
by ‘death’ in war being equated with murders, repeated in lines
2 and 3. The accumulated effect of the harsh alliterative ‘m’ in
the second and third lines makes the reader share the speaker’s
shock at what is before him. This allows them to make the
connection between the horrific slaughter ‘they once
witnessed’ and what they have become.
Rhyme / Inversion
• “Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles”
• Rhyming terms ‘Batter’ and shatter’ confront the reader
as does the image of ‘flying muscles’ as men’s bodies
are ripped apart. To emphasise the on-going hell these
helpless men endure, word inversion and reference to
the senses of sight and sound are used, ‘Always they
must see these things and hear them’. The horrors they
have witnessed have utterly debilitated them; their
lifeline to normalcy has been completely severed. They
are longer and will never be the men they once were.
• ‘Rucked’ serves as an effective image for the
convoluted and war-torn terrain, thick with the dead in
which they lived and fought.
STANZA 3: Language Techniques
In Stanza 3 the soldiers have lost visual contact with the outer
world as they focus instead on an inner sight fractured by pain
and death.
• Eyeballs shrink tormented back into their brains
• Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;
• Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh
• Their heads wear this hilarious, hideous, Awful falseness of
set-smiling corpses
• Thus their hands are plucking…picking…snatching…pawing
Personification / Alliteration
• “Still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains”
• The men’s eyes rolling back in their heads further
adding to the image of these men as inhuman and
the conveys the mental anguish they cannot
escape from. The harsh alliterative “b” also seems
aggressive and reflects Owen’s anger at what these
men have been reduced to. Word inversion is also
used here placing emphasis on “tormented”.
• Therefore still tormented their eyeballs shrink back…
Symbolism & Simile
• Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;
• Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh
• Blood imagery is effectively developed through the compound
words, ‘blood-smear’ and ‘blood-black’. The impact is
increased further by the ‘b’ alliteration and the negative
connotations of ‘smear’ and ‘black’.
• Neither ‘Sunlight’ nor ‘night’ has any effect on the world these
soldiers live. ‘Dawn’ heralds no rebirth, repair or redemption for
them.
• Dawn is usually symbolic of a new day, a fresh start.
• They exist in a twilight world where each new day merely
beckons more of the same, opening ‘like a wound that bleeds
afresh’. Theirs is a mental wound that festers and weeps and
never heals.
Extended Metaphor
“Their heads wear this hilarious,
hideous, Awful falseness of setsmiling corpses”
• The extended metaphor of
these patients as living corpses,
begun in the opening stanza is
concluded in the final stanza by
their description as ‘set-smiling
corpses’. The ‘falseness’ of their
appearance emphasises that
they have been dehumanised.
War has taken away their
humanity. They appear almost
as animals or the living dead.
Personal Pronoun & Verbs
• Thus their hands are
plucking…picking…snatching…pawing
• Their men’s frenzied actions, ‘plucking’, ‘picking’,
‘snatching’ and ‘pawing’ (verbs) are easily envisaged.
It conveys the desperation of these men and also their
mental incapacitation. They are scourged by ‘ropeknouts’ of society’s making that ‘dealt them war and
madness’. The final four lines have a sermonistic tone as
if we are being directly addressed to recognise our
culpability in the fates of these men. We recognise our
representative involvement through terms such as
‘brother’ and ‘us’.
EMOTIVE LANGUAGE:
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Purgatorial
Leer
Wicked
Pain
Slow panic
Misery
Hell, hellish
Ravished
Murders
Carnage
Squander
Tormented
Blood-black
Wound
Hideous
Corpse
Scourging, snatching,
plucking, pawing
• War
• Madness
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Theme and Purpose
• Written in 1918 – Owen captures the damage to men’s minds
as a result of war. The damage was no more shameful than
bodily wounds, however the after effects of war didn’t always
find ready acceptance at that time.
• Owen’s aim is to shock, to describe in stark detail the ghastly
physical symptoms of mental torment. As in DULCE ET
DECORUM EST, Owen shows men in their prime become senile
wrecks. In this case however it is due to how they have been
impacted mentally rather than as a result of physical injury.
• Owen also comments on the culpability of the public for the
fate of these men. War, which is madness itself, was waged
with such men as its cannon fodder and for that we all stand
indicted. There is a social responsibility for what has befallen
‘these hellish’, ‘these helpless’ and ‘these things’.
LITERATURE RESPONSE
• Plan and write a response to the following:
• Describe an interesting idea in a text(s) you have
studied. Explain how techniques have been used to
help you understand this idea(s).