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CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF WILFRED OWEN’S ‘DISABLED’
Owen’s poem of 1917/18 tells the story of what happens to one of the heroes of the Great War once he is wounded and invalided out of the army. It shows in detail the shift from being the heroic young man, proudly showing –off the scrapes of a game of “football” –to a forgotten shell of a man, unable to act for himself and ignored by society as a whole. Owen is warning the reader and invoking pity for the soldiers by showing the stark reality of the Great War. This does not mean that students should consider him a pacifist – nowhere in his poems does he call for an end to war and seek peace, rather he strives to educate the reader to the reality of war once the patriotic jingoism has been removed. Possibly, before reading the poem, students should consider the quotation paraphrased here “if you want to know the reality of war, look in a field hospital”. These words were written in the 1920s by the German Erich Maria Remarque following his experiences in WW1. Owen’s writing seems remarkably prescient.
The poem is focused from the opening word on a soldier – wholly impersonal and therefore representing all soldiers- who is sitting alone in an hospital ward having lost his legs in battle. This man reflects on his past heroics and the current isolation he suffers now that he is fully marginalised from society. Owen is able to reflect his loneliness and also to comment on the nature of the war propaganda which led young men to join the army, even lying about their age with the full connivance of the recruiting officers.
The language in this poem is indicative of the care taken by Owen to find precisely the right words to suit his purpose. Looking closely at Stanza 1 will show what I mean. After the opening word –“He” - which reflects the impersonal nature of the poem Owen’s scene setting introduces a sequence of telling linguistic choices: The soldier waits for “dark”, prefiguring death as well as the end of the day; he wears a “ghastly suit of grey” which not only bleaches colour and strength form the young man but also introduces a sense of the hellish and the ghostly into the poem; The third line, after shocking the reader with the opening “Legless”, breaks half way through – the caesura seeming to reflect the very injury referred to in the line; This sudden break is followed by references to unattainable “voices” of boys and play – the very thing this boy will no longer have access to before Owen uses the verb “mothering” to imply a sense of security and motherly love, both of which he is now denied.
Another feature of the writing is the use of active verbs and euphemism when discussing his injury. He “threw away his knees” as though nothing more than waste paper; he “poured” his blood down shell holes, again making the soldier the agent of his own misfortunes. Owen avoids any graphic description of the wound, instead telling his tale of how it used to be when the boy was carried shoulder high with a “smear” of blood on his thigh –a far cry from the heroic “leap of purple” which “leaps” so athletically from him as he receives his crippling wound. And he sets this against a beautiful and calm image of the “glow-lamps” of the times when the boy was fit and healthy.
Owen also breaks up his syntax in stanza 4 as the young man recalls his enlisting. As he questions his thought processes and realises the vanity and the hypocrisy evident in the process his control falters.
The lines fragment as the sentences become short and broken. In this stanza Owen writes in line 3 a line which manages to look both ways –first explaining the image created in the opening couplet and then, as it moves to line 4 showing the reader that it was on the back of his heroic sporting exploits that the boy “thought he’d better join”. The link is clearly made between sport and the image of war portrayed by the authorities of the time.
This sense of propaganda is carried on into the next stanza and built up to further stress the contrast with his return and the eerie man who “thanked” him – the italics stressing the word possibly to highlight the lack of thanks received form official quarters – before trying to use his injury to engage him in a proselytising exercise.
Left alone in the ward for “a few sick years”, his short life ruined by his actions, the man reflects on his situation. At the end of the poem, after the contrast with the “whole” man which helps to pick up the theme of the poor attitude of the women he has loved to his situation, Owen places the reader into the soldier’s head and forces us to share his anguish. The repeated “why don’t they come?” haunts the reader as it is a question that we simply cannot answer and possibly fear to do so. It is about so much more than bed time – it is about the attitude of those who remained at home and allowed others to fight for them; about those who shy away from the ill, the crippled and the infirm.
Jonathan Peel SGS 2012
CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF W.H AUDEN'S 'REFUGEE BLUES’
Put
in simple terms, this is a poem about the plight of a specific group of
refugees displaced and arriving in a country that is generally hostile to their
situation, even if well-meaning. Written in 1939, Auden focuses on the German
Jews arriving in the UK at that time, though the poem has taken in a timeless
quality due to the commonality of its subject. Indeed, it is not until stanza 8
that Auden identifies his Refugees. Possibly he is trying to show the
reluctance of the persecuted to identify themselves for fear of further
persecution, possibly he is allowing the narrator –we assume a husband – to
present the key ideas of his poem without the idea of Jewishness in some way
getting in the way of a universal message. He has chosen the title Refugee
Blues to link to the protest and subculture of the enslaved Blacks, who
developed this musical form in the Southern USA, and has written a poem in
which the rhythm and rhyme scheme (AAB) reflects the musical style. This is
another way of linking the fate of the Jews with a more universal theme of
suffering. Remember that this was written in 1939 – before the Holocaust and
before any real idea of the savagery and brutality of Hitler and Stalin.
There is a wide range of powerful imagery used to build up
the overall picture. In the opening line, the choice of the word “souls” is
important since it not only suggests a religious or sacred connotation, but
also serves to remove barriers between peoples – all are souls whether in
“mansions” or “holes”. Auden points out the artificial nature of human
segregation here. He refers to a Yew tree in stanza 3, locating the poem in
England but also setting up, by means of the reference to the Spring
blossoms, an idea of hope for the future which must be allowed to permeate this
poem, negative though it is. The tree is carried into the reference in the next
line to “old passports” – in essence dead trees- which suggests that hope may
not actually exist for all the people of the world. Auden uses Pathetic Fallacy
in stanzas in stanzas 7&10 with great effect. Hitler’s speeches are
metaphorically linked with thunder and therefore with threat and destructive
power and in the final stanza the snow serves to provide chill and a bleaching
of emotion to accompany the remarkable prediction of the events in Russia some
years later.
Other
linguistic devices that might be of interest include the direct speech in
stanza 4, the use of the word ”politely” in stanza 5, and the repetition of “my
dear” which runs through the poem in an understated comment on the affection
and love between the couple.
The poem’s
meaning is clearly expressed in Stanzas 2 & 9. This is more than simple
comment on the fate of the displaced. IN Stanza 2 Auden refers to the fact that
“once we had a country and we thought it far” and seems to be looking beyond
the homeland just left back to Palestine, the traditional homeland of the
Jewish race. If this is the case, then a reader must sense a stronger political
comment here. The Jews would be granted Palestine in 1947 to set up the state
of Israel and since this time the area has been riven with conflict. Is Auden
suggesting as early as 1939 that this should be the aim of the refugees?
Whatever your opinion on this, the harbour portrayed in Stanza 9 offers two
meanings. First the harbour and the quays are reflections of travel – of the
great Diaspora undertaken from Germany in the 30s and elsewhere throughout
history as persecuted peoples wait to embark to escape their tormentors. Auden
links this idea with that of the contrast between the freedom of the animal
kingdom, seemingly within touching distance ( but still out of reach) and the
persecution or polite lack of interest shown to the narrator of the poem.
The poem has
an effect beyond the apparent simplicity of its message and it gains in power
form the musical form and the ideas within it. The reader will notice,
hopefully with a shudder of self-recognition, that the Jews are viewed as
thieves of “our daily bread”, a phrase which links the accusers directly to the
Christian community and shows up the innate hypocrisy of many “people of
faith”.
Jonathan
Peel SGS 2012
ANOTHER ANALYSIS OF REFUGEE BLUES - W. H. AUDEN
Auden’s ‘Refugee Blues’ laments the plight of the Jews who were forced to flee Europe when the Holocaust started and they were rounded up and killed or imprisoned under the cruel regime of Hitler.
The poem starts with a narrator, who is later revealed to be a German Jew, describing a large city which is home to ten million people some of whom are well off and live in luxurious large houses while others make do in slums and shabby houses. Yet, the narrator tells the person with him, presumably a woman, that there is no place for them there. He remembers that they once had a country long ago, speaking of Palestine, and they thought the world of it. But now their own country is so distant to them that to see it they have to browse through an atlas and he knows that they can’t go there either.
The narrator then remarks on how every spring the flowers grow anew on the old tree that grows in the village churchyard, and mourns to his companion that old passports can’t renew themselves, remembering how the country where they wanted to go had rejected them saying that they were as good as dead if they didn’t have updated passports. It seems that it is their misfortune that they are still among the living, considering his dejected tone as he addresses his companion. He remembers how when he had gone to the people who had been made responsible for providing the war refugees homes, they had been polite to him, yet hadn’t been able to help him, having their hands tied because of the politics and had told him to return next year. Recalling a public meeting that he had attended, he remembers that a person had accused them of trying to steal away the livelihood of the occupants of the city by barging in, and informs his companion that that man had been talking of them.
He thinks that he heard the rumbling of an imminent storm, but it turned out to be Hitler sentencing them all to death. He sees a dog securely wrapped in a warm jacket, and a cat get inside a car, the door of which had been held open for it and thinks that they are lucky that they aren’t German Jews. He notices the fish swimming freely in the water at the harbor and the birds flying wherever they want in the skies when he goes to the woods and marvels at them not having any politicians and wars as they were not human beings.
He then tells his companion that he had had a dream in which he saw a magnificent building which could accommodate a thousand people yet there was no place for them in it anywhere. He remembers how when he stood on the plains and looked through the falling snow, he could see a thousand soldiers marching towards them, looking for them, to put them away, to kill them.
The language used in the poem is as simple as the message behind it is complex. Auden uses the refrain at the end of each stanza, customary for a blues song, each a dejected realization in its own by the narrator of his and every other refugee sorry plight. Hitler’s command for all Jews to be killed is personified as the rumbling of thunder which can be heard just before lightning strikes and the world descends into the chaos of a political storm. Simple analogies have been used such as that of the birds and fish flying and swimming freely and pets being treated better than the Jews have been used to convey the low position these rejected people, in terms that they understand.
Conveying the utter lost and pathetic state of the German Jewish refugees who had been forced to leave their homes and find sanctuary in other countries. For a few years these people had been welcomed into other countries and given meager yet sustainable jobs and accommodations. But then as war threatened to break out and Hitler’s word became law in Germany, these people were no longer allowed entry into other countries, and were persecuted in their own. They were called sub-humans, a term which Auden explores by making the narrator realize that the animals he sees are treated better than them because they aren’t German Jews. The sense of being hunted, of being sought out, persecuted is apparent throughout the poem, as one by one all the doors to a better future are shut on the narrator’s face and it reaches its climax in the last stanza when the narrator witnesses the thousands of people who are raging war against his people, imprisoning them and killing them. The inhumanity with which Jews were treated during those times and the Holocaust and its terrible tales which few lived to tell are already well known today, but this poem highlights what these people must have felt, when they had no place to call home, nowhere to go and no one to turn to.
It is a chilling and depressing poem which reminds one of the extents to which humanity can fall, becoming beasts, thirsty for each other’s blood and lives. Many poets have tried to capture the anguish and cruelty of war, some have succeeded, but only a handful have mastered it to the extent that there words are forever reminders to mankind; reminders which, with the increasing religious intolerance and biased prejudices have become all the more important in today’s world.
http://litxpert.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/poetry-analysis-refugee-blues-w-h-auden/
The narrator then remarks on how every spring the flowers grow anew on the old tree that grows in the village churchyard, and mourns to his companion that old passports can’t renew themselves, remembering how the country where they wanted to go had rejected them saying that they were as good as dead if they didn’t have updated passports. It seems that it is their misfortune that they are still among the living, considering his dejected tone as he addresses his companion. He remembers how when he had gone to the people who had been made responsible for providing the war refugees homes, they had been polite to him, yet hadn’t been able to help him, having their hands tied because of the politics and had told him to return next year. Recalling a public meeting that he had attended, he remembers that a person had accused them of trying to steal away the livelihood of the occupants of the city by barging in, and informs his companion that that man had been talking of them.
He thinks that he heard the rumbling of an imminent storm, but it turned out to be Hitler sentencing them all to death. He sees a dog securely wrapped in a warm jacket, and a cat get inside a car, the door of which had been held open for it and thinks that they are lucky that they aren’t German Jews. He notices the fish swimming freely in the water at the harbor and the birds flying wherever they want in the skies when he goes to the woods and marvels at them not having any politicians and wars as they were not human beings.
He then tells his companion that he had had a dream in which he saw a magnificent building which could accommodate a thousand people yet there was no place for them in it anywhere. He remembers how when he stood on the plains and looked through the falling snow, he could see a thousand soldiers marching towards them, looking for them, to put them away, to kill them.
The language used in the poem is as simple as the message behind it is complex. Auden uses the refrain at the end of each stanza, customary for a blues song, each a dejected realization in its own by the narrator of his and every other refugee sorry plight. Hitler’s command for all Jews to be killed is personified as the rumbling of thunder which can be heard just before lightning strikes and the world descends into the chaos of a political storm. Simple analogies have been used such as that of the birds and fish flying and swimming freely and pets being treated better than the Jews have been used to convey the low position these rejected people, in terms that they understand.
Conveying the utter lost and pathetic state of the German Jewish refugees who had been forced to leave their homes and find sanctuary in other countries. For a few years these people had been welcomed into other countries and given meager yet sustainable jobs and accommodations. But then as war threatened to break out and Hitler’s word became law in Germany, these people were no longer allowed entry into other countries, and were persecuted in their own. They were called sub-humans, a term which Auden explores by making the narrator realize that the animals he sees are treated better than them because they aren’t German Jews. The sense of being hunted, of being sought out, persecuted is apparent throughout the poem, as one by one all the doors to a better future are shut on the narrator’s face and it reaches its climax in the last stanza when the narrator witnesses the thousands of people who are raging war against his people, imprisoning them and killing them. The inhumanity with which Jews were treated during those times and the Holocaust and its terrible tales which few lived to tell are already well known today, but this poem highlights what these people must have felt, when they had no place to call home, nowhere to go and no one to turn to.
It is a chilling and depressing poem which reminds one of the extents to which humanity can fall, becoming beasts, thirsty for each other’s blood and lives. Many poets have tried to capture the anguish and cruelty of war, some have succeeded, but only a handful have mastered it to the extent that there words are forever reminders to mankind; reminders which, with the increasing religious intolerance and biased prejudices have become all the more important in today’s world.
http://litxpert.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/poetry-analysis-refugee-blues-w-h-auden/
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