Disabled by Wilfred Owen

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Born 18th March 1893, Owen was raised in Merseyside. His education began at the Berkhamstead institute and continued at the Technical school in Shrewsbury after his family was forced to move there. Owen began experimenting with poetry at the young age of 17. After failing to achieve a place at university, Owen moved to France to teach the Berlitz school of English following a year as a lay assistant. It was during the latter part of 1914 and early 1915 when Owen became increasingly aware of the magnitude of World War One and moved back to England to enlist in the ‘Artists rifles’. 1917 saw Owen’s first post in France, where he witnessed his first taste of the brutality of war. He experienced the horrors of being trapped in a dug out whilst under bombardment; and in May he was caught in a shell explosion and eventually diagnosed as having ‘shell shock’. In June 1918 Owen arrived at Craig Lockhart War Hospital, it was here he met Siegfried Sassoon another patient and poet. The period at Craig Lockhart was in many ways Owens most creative time, where he wrote many of the poems that he is known for to this day.

Like many of Owen’s other poems ‘Disabled’ explores the themes of war and the impact on soldiers. This poem particularly focusses on one individual and is interpreted by many as a poem that invites the reader to pity and empathise the above the knee, double amputee war hero for the loss of his legs. However, this interpretation not only disregards the subjects social isolation which Owen directly addresses in this poem, but also fails to acknowledge the subjects identity as a human being as defined by the language throughout the poem. ‘Disabled’ reveals the irony of war, a soldier’s fight for his countries freedom which in tu...

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...e the terrible realities of the deaths. it is widely known that prayers and ells represent a celebration to the souls that have ascended into heaven, but Owen points out in this poem that the deaths on the battlefield were so horrific and needless that even religion cannot save these souls.

Owen wants readers to recognise that no sort of harmonic music can be enjoyed through the sounds of war. ‘At the end of the day, the battlefield is left “sad” because the pain is so great that even an inanimate object could empathize and feel the pain of the losses of soldiers’.

Works Cited

http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/530/707 A Critical Analysis of Wilfred Owen's "Disabled". Copyright 2005 by the Society for Disability Studies. (ACCESSED 30TH 05 2012)

http://litxpert.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/poetry-analysis-disabled-wilfred-owen/ litxpert, Disabled analysis,

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