Presents poignant picture of young soldier "legless, sewn short at elbow" l.3 - combination of brutal frankness + tactful indirectness - vague - sets what he had been before against what he's been left with.

Once had youth, energy, virility. Impelled to enlist under-age "Smiling they wrote the lie: aged nineteen years" l.29 with a fine figure of which "Someone had once said he'd look a god in kilts" l.25, with girls glancing "lovelier" - certainly have looked forward to a normal relationship with women.

Contrasts through metaphor + symbol. The "blood-smear down his leg" l.21 - prowess at football = life-enhancing, loss of colour l.17 + blood poured "down shell-holes till veins ran dry" l.18 = life-draining.

"Light blue trees" l.8 represent carefree past when "Town used to swing so gay" l.7 while "his ghastly suit of grey" l.2 illustrates joyless present. Evening time filled with enjoyment "when glow lamps budded" l.8 but evening now means "waiting for dark" l.1 shivering, resentful of "how cold and late it is." l.45.

Language
Opening stanza - depicts activity eclipsed by stillness due to passing of hours - metaphor for effects of time on young man in rest of the poem. Many references that signal past: "about this time" l.7 / "in the old times" l.10 / "one time" l.21. Owen’s triple use of "now" pulls us back to present - each time word appears at start of line. In l.11 + 16 appears within stanza + is the 1st word of final stanza.

Negatives to illustrate the harsh "now". In l.1 "waiting" - sense of hopelessness rather than anticipation, association with "dark" + cold conveyed by "shivered" l.2. The "ghastly", "legless suit", "sewn short at elbow" l.2-3 relentlessly exposes us to man’s plight. (Links to waiting in Exposure)

In stanza 2 the "Now" returns us from man’s past to present + future where he'll: "never feel again how slim / Girl’s waists are, or how warm their subtle hands". l.11-12 The relational longing implied by these words builds throughout the poem. ‘Now’: "All of them touch him like some queer disease." (l.13)
Owen juxtaposes women's revulsion at end of stanza 2 with man’s lost beauty in stanzas 3,4 +5. Effect of making final female rejection of him "tonight" more poignant: "the women’s eyes / Passed from him to the strong men who were whole" l.43-4
Reasons for this in stanza 3: "Now he is old" l.16 + repeats plosive ‘b’ to emphasise harsh truth that "his back will never brace" l.16. Owen’s use of present tense in, "He’s lost his colour" l.17,- reminder of how actions of past continue to have impact in present - one moment of warfare changed man’s life forever.

Owen concludes pitiful: "How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come / And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?" l.45-6
Exclaiming about temp + lateness of hour - kind of comment associated with elderly - would never have bothered fit young footballer man once was. Repeated complaint strikes querulous (petulant) tone + sheer fact it needs asking (twice) emphasises man’s physical helplessness – like a child he needs "putting to bed".

Owen sees ex-soldier’s future as dismal: "few sick years" l.40 all that are left, doing only what "the rules consider wise" l.41 + taking "whatever pity they may dole." l.42 Each word is dreary + empty of hope + joy. "Pity" given out as if it is duty, term "dole" being associated with charitable hand-outs to destitute.

Owen concentrates poetic techniques in description of turning point when man’s "lifetime lapsed" l.19. Sudden flow of blood conveyed by flowing ‘l’ alliteration: "half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race / And leap of purple." l.20

Whilst plosive ‘p’s + hard ‘t’ and ‘d’ make assonance of "purple spurted" l.20 distasteful. Owen’s use of active "threw away his knees" l.10, "lost" l.17 + "poured" l.18 - ironic, suggesting that man’s suffering was of his own volition.

Grim outcome of these injuries: multiple amputation. Blood would "leap" + spurt from severed arteries, veins would "run dry"+ limbs would die as result. Verb "poured" l.18 - ambiguous. Blood would literally pour from open wound but Owen means sacrifices on front often compared to Christ’s pouring out his life blood in order to save others. Analogy,soldier’s blood "poured .. down the shell-holes" l.18 is to save his country. (Links to sacrifice in POTOMATY)

Owen uses only 2 similes. 1st refers to voices of playing boys - remind him of pleasant, rather than enforced, leisure. Even so, their voices "rang saddening like a hymn," l.4. It is end of the day. Although evening hymns are traditionally quiet + reflective, suggestion here is that they are melancholic.

In l.6 sleep is personified as a mother gathering her children to her at the end of the day: "Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him." - gentle metaphor that conveys deep pity for man who is cold + tired + yet unable to leave position until someone (not a mother) remembers he needs putting to bed.

Symbolism

Broken figure at centre - powerful symbol standing for destruction + aftermath of war. Football game and + blood smear down his leg symbolises way in which at 1st many men saw war as a game to be won with honour + glory, but which ended in bloodshed + slaughter.

Youth + innocence of participants emphasised. Over the 1st 3 stanzas Owen refers to boys, girls + face of adolescent soldier which looked "younger than his youth". These are all the "doomed youth" of the Anthem. Only a year later, ex-soldier "is old" l.16.

"The solemn man" of l.37 and + pity "doled" out by institutions of final stanza symbolise insensitivity of what Owen sometimes called 'The Nation’ i.e. the Home front.

Start and + end of poem. It is the darkness, l.1 coming "after day" l.5. The coldness + lateness of penultimate line are symbols in their own way of death for which man waits.

Tone
Owen sets overall tone of sadness + despair in 1st lines. Voices of boys playing in park "rang saddening" l.4. Their "play + pleasure" casts immobile, disabled man into deeper gloom. Whereas they are "mothered" home to sleep, ex-soldier stranded, apparently forgotten, at poem’s end.

Moments when Owen takes us back into past do little to lighten tone. Constantly reminded of waste of war. Triumph of victorious footballer "carried shoulder high" l.22 juxtaposed by images of WWI stretcher-bearers carrying damaged bodies like that of ex-soldier. Although soldier had helped "win" war, not cheered as he would have been if he’d scored a winning "Goal", despite his much more costly efforts.

Structure
Owen recounts man’s life + present condition over 7 stanzas of differing lengths. Sadness + despair threaded through every verse:

Stanza 1 - man in wheel-chair. Cold + motionless, waiting for day to end. Same scene in final stanza, when day has ended + left behind in cold darkness.

Stanza 2 - introduces physical longing experienced by wounded man. Recalling how girls "glanced lovelier", realises that he will never feel again slimness of "Girls' waists" l.12

Stanza 3 - juxtaposes past handsomeness of young man which had attracted attentions of a painter with his current appearance – unable to sit up straight, devoid of limbs + colour, "half" the man he was l.19

Stanza 4 - depicts youthful innocence of lad more swayed by football, girls, glamour + alcohol than by any measured reflection about cost of war. Not yet nineteen + trying to impress a girlfriend (‘his Meg’ l.26, whose fickleness is conveyed by her absence from man’s current situation). Now bitterly experienced, man’s bewilderment + regret captured by understatement: "He wonders why." l.24

Stanza 5 - Owen tells us that disabled man had had no idea of realities of warfare. Not previously experienced focused enmity or paralysing "Fear" l.32; rather, he joined up for uniform, comradeship + pay, cheered to front by crowds + drums.

Brief penultimate stanza details man’s inactivity once wounded, merely passive recipient of others’ unenthusiastic attentions

Final stanza reminds us that ex-soldier now permanently excluded from ranks of those who are "strong" + "whole" l.44, unable even to go to bed unaided.

L.35 Stanza 5 - man is in his prime, 1 of the "young recruits". Brave phrase rhymed in the forlorn 6th verse with "fruits" he earned from his labours – not glory, but sympathy + a life (in stanza 7) of "sick years in institutes".

Significant that l.12 ends with "hands",- no counter rhyme anywhere else in poem. Warmth of the girls’ hands will never again be experienced by disabled man.

Writing largely in pentameter in l.10 + 40 Owen introduces an extra foot - disrupt narrative flow + halt forward progress of reader, just as it has halted progress of young soldier
L.23 Owen adds extra syllable, subtly focusing on incoherence of man who has drunk too much after football match and signs up as a consequence. With too much time to reflect, indicated by dash, the man now bewildered at how things ended up as they did ("- He wonders why." l.24). Owen evokes halting search of man’s memory for reasons he went to war by employing frequent caesura in the 4th stanza.

Themes
Suffering
Tragedy of Battle

	Created by anndjan21 over 9 years ago

AS Level English Literature (Wilfred Owen War Poems) Note on Disabled, created by anndjan21 on 03/03/2015.