Literary Analysis Of Wilfred Owen's Pity Of War?
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How does Wilfred Owen convey the ‘pity of war’ in his poem, Disabled?
Wilfred Owen explained, in a letter to his mother, that the purpose of him writing poems was to show ‘the pity of war’ to the world. This essay will explore how Owen showed the ‘pity of war’ in his poem ‘Disabled’. Owen’s ‘Disabled’ is a narrative about a soldier that lost his legs and an arm in the war and how he is treated when he returns from the front line. This reflects Owen’s life at this time as he wrote this poem while he was recuperating in a military hospital for wounds sustained in the battlefield. Through the use of contrast, shocking imagery and juxtaposition Owen portrays the pity of war and the effects of the horrors of war on the soldiers.
Owen creates pity for the soldier using emotive language in the first stanza. The soldier is described as “shivering in his ghastly suit of grey”. The adjective “ghastly” has connotations of ghouls and death. These connotations present the soldier as ghost like and dead but not gone, implying that his mind died in war and that he is nothing but a ghostly shadow of his past self. This description provides a lot of sympathy towards the soldier as he is so close to death that he is a ghost and a fragment of what he once was. Additionally the verb “shivering” gives a lot of sympathy to the soldier. “Shivering” shows that he is extremely cold with nothing to warm him up. This is symbolic of how he has no one to come and help him after the war and how no one