Poetry Analysis: Wilfred Owen’s “Disabled”

Owen stated that his chief concern was “War, and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity.” Wilfred Owen’s “Disabled” is inspired from a real life tragedy during World War I; a soldier whose life was drastically changed after the monstrous war. Owen encountered various instances like these when he was hospitalized in Craiglockhart Hospital. Several of these injuries aggravated due to lack of adequate medical care. Wilfred Owen depicts the typical picture of the disabled where “people with disabilities are more dependent, childlike, passive, sensitive, and miserable” than their nondisabled counterparts, and “are depicted as pained by their fate.” (Linton, 1998, p. 25).

The man appears to be in a stagnant condition, on a wheelchair. His reference of the passing time is not action, but the changing hues of day and night as he waits for the dark. He waits for the dark, as he has nothing productive to do. Darkness may also be a symbol of death , that what his vegetable existence longs for. His ghastly suit of grey does not offer him much protection as he shivers in it. The happy voices of the boys in the park come across as a melancholic hymn to him, as his perception of life is distressing as his life is. The poet has utilized ‘mothered’ as a verb for ‘adopted’ or shaped’. He means to say that the boys’ experiences of life were shaped by their ‘play’ and ‘pleasure’. The alliteration underlines the harmony in their life. In this sense, the poet is different as he has only his solitariness to ‘mother’ him. Pigg states that the first stanza “sets the stage for understanding this alienated figure that [the poet] observes.”

This was the time of the day, when the town used to be so gay. Individual isolation (in the first stanza) is juxtaposed against communal harmony here. The figure of speech used is a ‘transferred epithet, as it not the town but its inhabitants who were gay. The glow lamps decorated the light blue trees. The girls looked even lovelier as the lights grew dim. Before he was handicapped he used to date the girls and feel the slim waists of the girls and their warm fragile hands. Now they either touch him in revulsion or out of sheer sympathy. He is treated as ‘queer’ as opposed to the state of normalcy. ‘Queer’ is also utilized because he was alienated in the eyes of society.

The artist would hold in admiration his face earlier, when it held the passion of youth and while his physique was intact. Now he is bent by life’s oppressions. Therefore, “his back will never brace.” As an amputee, he has lost his color and vigor. The shell-holes had drained his veins. The accident made him lose half his life-time all at once. The leap of purple that spurted from his thigh had changed his life forever. The futility of war had brought him face to face with the hollowness of human existence. Earlier he was younger than his youth; now he is older than his age.

Owen was fascinated with the romanticism and idealism associated with the war; hence he joined the army to create an identity for himself. In his youth, a ‘blood-smear’ down the leg after a match was a trophy to flaunt about. He was extremely obsessed with himself and treasured a comment that he looked like a God in kilts. It was not a conscious decision to join the army, A decision he says he made probably after he ‘drunk a peg.

He recalls the circumstances that led him to join the army. First of all, he wanted to please Meg. His primary reasons were therefore superficial. The very base of the whole enterprise seemed to be fraudulent as it began with lies about his age. “Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts.” Jilts refers to women who are mainly characterized by impulsiveness based on their whims and fancies. Though these women adored the heroic ideals of the war, they could not come to terms with the harsh practicalities of the same. As much they adored the chivalric image of the speaker, they were averse to the amputatee.

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;
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 drought of jewelled hills
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.

The gravity of the situation is brought out in this condensed stanza. The people did cheer him, not out of awe or honour but purely out of sympathy. They only made him more aware of his own loss, rather than paying a tribute to him. They did not acknowledge his sacrifice as we gather from the poem:.

Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
Thanked him; and then enquired about his soul.
He anticipates his mechanical future that held no promise for him He would while it away in institutes and abide by the rules. In such a state, not only would his physical self be imprisoned but also his spiritual self. He may graciously weigh(dole) the pity that was directed against him.

In the future, he would spend a few sick years in institutes, His life is not even granted the basic functions of subsistence. Though he wants to sleep at the moment, he cannot, even do that as it requires someone to help him to his bed. Earlier , though he was the cynosure of all eyes, tonight he perceives how swiftly women’s eyes passed on from him to strong men that were ‘whole’. Currently, the quality of ‘ male beauty’ was no longer a criterion. Now, the primary concern was that of being Norrmal/abnormal.

References:

Linton, S. (1998). Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. NY: New York University Press

Rukhaya M.K

A Literary Companion