Techniques Sheet - Disabled

DISABLED
WILFRED OWEN
BACKGROUND:
Wilfred Owen is the best known of the English poets who wrote about their
experiences of the First World War (1914–1918). These experiences had deep
effects on the writers, and cost many of them their lives. Owen was strongly
influenced by another officer and poet called Siegfried Sassoon. They met at
Craiglockhart Hospital where they had both been sent to recover from shellshock.
Owen twice said that his theme was ‘war and the pity of war’. Having returned to
his regiment after his time in hospital, he died in battle in November 1918, just
seven days before the armistice brought the war to an end on 11th November
1918. This is a poignant poem, written in 1917, in which a young man reflects on
his current situation of living in a hospital for wounded soldiers and compares his bleak existence now to
his life before the war when he was strong, active and popular.
THEMES:
 naïveté of youth;
 loss and regret;
 rejection and abandonment;
 despair;
 cruelty and destruction of war;
 contrast between the fantasy and harsh reality of being a soldier.
GENRE:
 A Poem
AUDIENCE:
 People who are being affected on war

 Who are interested in psychology
PURPOSE:
 To express the feelings

 To show the carelessness of the young man in decision making
44
IGCSE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ANTHOLOGY A
STRUCTURE:
 Seven stanzas of irregular length.

 There is no strict rhyme scheme but examples of words rhyme within two or three lines of each
other and within the stanza.
 Owen links the narrative from verse to verse by overlapping rhyme patterns into new stanzas, for
example ‘grey’ and ‘day’ in stanza one rhyme with ‘gay’ in the second verse.
 The poem moves from a description of the young man sitting alone at the hospital to his past,
carefree life to the horror of the injury on the battlefield and then back to the past.
 Towards the end we are taken back to the hospital and the final two haunting rhetorical questions
that leave the reader, as well as the young man, contemplating his future.
LANGUAGE ANALYSIS:
1. Alliteration
Example: “ghastly suit of grey”
Effect: to emphasize the sadness / plight of the soldier
Example: “sewn Short”
Effect: to heighten the loss
Example: “girls glanced”
Effect: to show the contrast in his life through loss of youth
Example: “lifetime lapsed”
Effect: to portray the destruction of life at a young age
2. Personification
Example: “sleep had mothered them…”
Effect: sleep being an object behaves like a mother, shows the dependent state and brings
out the predicament
Recollects the distant memories
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3. Simile
Example: “touched him like a queer disease”
Effect: highlights the plight of a disabled soldier, needless loss and unrecognized sacrifice
4. Use of color and nature
Example: “grey”, “purple”, evening
Effect: disastrous side of life is put forward
5. Irony
Example: “sleep had mothered them…”
Effect: when the sleep behaves like a mother, girls who should act like this act very
inhumanely
Example: “blood smear down his leg:”
Effect: he was proud to be injured in the football field, but when he really should be proud
of himself, the disable soldier is worried about the injury.
6. Repetition
Example: “voices of…”
Effect: to iterate on how distant memories haunt his present dependable state
7. Rhetorical Question
Example: “Why don’t they come?”
Effect: to heighten the pitiful closing of life, loneliness, negligence and how his life changed
in a short time dramatically
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8. Concept of Reversal
Effect: compares the present life of an injured soldier to his past hopes and
accomplishments to emphasize how wrong he was when taking the decision in
joining the army, which affected his entire life badly.
EXAM-STYLE QUESTION
How successfully does the writer compare the ideas of sport and war in
‘Disabled’?
 the effects of war

 the use of contrast
 The writer’s use of language and structure
47

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How does the poet describe the soldier's current state and past life?

How does the poet describe the soldier's current state and past life?

What literary techniques does the poet use to convey his message?

What literary techniques does the poet use to convey his message?

DISABLED

 People who are being affected on war

 To express the feelings

 Seven stanzas of irregular length.

Example: “ghastly suit of grey”

Effect: to emphasize the sadness / plight of the soldier

Example: “sewn Short”

Effect: to heighten the loss

Example: “girls glanced”

Effect: to show the contrast in his life through loss of youth

Example: “lifetime lapsed”

Effect: to portray the destruction of life at a young age

Example: “sleep had mothered them…”

Recollects the distant memories

Example: “touched him like a queer disease”

4. Use of color and nature

Example: “grey”, “purple”, evening

Effect: disastrous side of life is put forward

Example: “sleep had mothered them…”

Example: “blood smear down his leg:”

Example: “voices of…”

Example: “Why don’t they come?”

 the effects of war

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