Wilfred Owen’s “Disabled” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” poems
Apart from Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” communicating the dreadfulness of the WW1, it also exposes the concealed truth of the precedent century. The author speaks to a young audience excited about war, is evident when he says “To children ardent for some desperate glory”, and this is to caution them that the war may not be what it seems. The poem has graphical and realism visuals on the conviction of battle, and this helps a lot as explains to the audience through a personal understanding of how it is not quite extraordinary dying for ones state. Meanwhile, the poem “Disabled” talks about a soldier who has returned home from the war-missing limbs, and how the disability has changed his life. The poem thus explores the consequences of WW1 on those who lived through it by comparing their lives after the war to their past expectations and goings-on.
It is certain that the two poems talk about the WWI where “Dulce et Decorum Est” (Poem A) talks of what the soldiers experienced in the battlefield with the “Disabled” (Poem B) talking about how life changed after the end of the war. This shows that the two poems have ghastly images of soldier hood and war where the happenings of the war caused death and injuries leaving most of the soldiers disabled.
In the Poem A, Owen uses descriptive words to bring out the real picture of the battle and speak on the truth regarding the war. The same applies with Poem B where he uses the same technique to paint the image of a helpless soldier seated in a wheel chair thus, unable to do what he was capable of doing before he went to fight for his country. This is evident in poem A when he says that the soldiers had bent like old beggars with knocked knees as they coughed like old hags. This is extremely descriptive, and it gives the audience the authenticity of the combat where when he analyzes them as tramps and old hags, the picture is quite different from what the children thought to be that made them excited about war. The same happens in Poem B when Owen describes the loneliness of the soldier in the dark, shivering with his legs amputated and the voice of young children reminding him of his childhood years of innocence and naivety, which the war had robbed him off for some time now.
However, there are some differences in how the author has enhanced the negative tone, which associates the war with an inglorious thing. In the poem A, the author has used diction to emphasize the central purpose of the poem, and such words include use of hags to illustrate the unattractiveness and despondent condition of the soldiers. He has also used words like trudge to emphasize the way soldiers marched which was in a long, hard, and exhausting manner. When the author speaks of “blood shod”, he emphasizes the illustrative image of a soldier at war covered in blood probably in pain or dying. To enhance the negative tone in poem B, the author decides to use harsh words to emphasize the meaning behind the poem in a subtle manner. For instance, he says ”ghastly suit of grey” to show the soldiers melancholic and disheartened mind. He also uses the word “mothers” when he says that sleep mothers him from the laughter and noises of the young boys to suggest that he sees no importance in the pleasures of the world, and instead prefers the temporary respite the sleep offers him. Additionally the use of the word throwing when he says he regrets throwing away his knees communicates ideas and inspirations behind his joining of the war, which was not as patriotic as they should have been.
The two poems are thus similar in many ways than they are different because the two focus on the war, one on the battle itself and the other one on the aftermath.
