"Disabled" by Wilfred Owen is a poetic analysis of war that exposes the struggles of adjusting to civilian life.

Disabled is a potent and strong poem because of mainly the style and structure that Owen
has used. Harsh words are used subtly to emphasize meaning behind the poem. reveals the irony of war; a
soldier's fight for his country's freedom results in the sacrifice of his mental and physical freedom. The soldiers and their families suffer from the scars and traumatic events of the war daily, while those that benefit can remain in oblivion of their suffering, suffering from their tragic loss of humanity. His friends, essence, memories, desirability, physical strength and admiration all ripped away from him. This poem could universally apply to all the

soldiers or even people in similar situations. This why the main character remains nameless and the title, "Disabled," broad enough for a wide audience to identify with him. The feelings expressed enable readers to get a deeper perspective of our emotional aches and pains. 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. 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. His appearance and lack of mobility causes him to feel like a burden, unwanted and deathly. In his depressed reflections, he has a dreamy, flashback revealing his subconscious thoughts which compare his lowly state to his triumphant younger days. Now the war has aged him tremendously internally and externally. The physical disability is wearing down on the solider internally and once again he is oppressed within his heart and mind. He feels incredible amounts of loneliness. The title of the poem quite obviously introduces the subject/theme of the poem. The first stanza sets
the stage for understanding this alienated and mutated figure the poet is observing. It seems as though the speaker occupies a privileged position, as he has no first-hand experience of what it is like to be an amputee and is merely an observer. This pathetic image proffered to the reader creates a relationship based on pity, meaning that the reader places a high value on his functioning body while devaluing the losses of the subject. Owen uses simple statement and blatant understatements to create images in the readers minds-legless, sewn short at elbow, this short, simple and abrupt leaves the readers with a pitiful, war -torn image. The poet uses waiting for dark as a euphemism for death, and the immediate appearance of grey and shivered set up the isolation of the wounded soldier showing his morbid and depressed state of mind, this strikes a strong comparison to the warmth of the next stanza. The language in this poem is indicative of the care taken by Owen

to find precisely the right words to suit his purpose. Owens scene setting introduces a sequence of telling linguistic choices: 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. the end of the first stanza invites the reader to accept the subject as being dependent is appearance
and lack of mobility causes him to feel like a burden. Owen has effectively molded his subject into a convincing other, a man near death and halfway into the grave, hanging in the limbo between death and life. As a contrast to the first stanza, where the language and imagery is bleak and foreboding, the second stanza begins with colorful images of the town, before the subject acquired his injury. Owen uses alliteration to link the two the two memories off glow-lamps and girls glanced. However, the jubilee is short-lived as the reader is soon thrust back into the subject's present reality, after he "threw away his knees", this implies that it was a needless loss and the subject feels a certain amount of guilt and self-acknowledgment in the role he has played in the loss of his legs. The subject is also reminded of the social scars he must now bear. He regrets throwing away his knees,

suggesting and later confirming that the ideas and inspirations behind joining the war were not as patriotic or loyal as they should have been, and his vanity only has now left him a cripple. The girls all touch him like a queer disease: the word queer had started being used to describe homosexuals, so to think his social standing is the same as those considered, in those times, to be an unnatural blasphemy, is extremely revealing on how people think of disabled people.
Owen reiterates the format of the previous stanza by giving the reader a glimpse of the subject's "normal" life, before becoming an amputee; Very quickly the reader is transported back to the veteran's present situation. This juxtaposition of normal/abnormal and remembrance and realization casts a harsh light on everything the soldier has lost and forces a division between the reader and the subject. The remembrances of the subject offer an illustration of a typical life with which the reader can relate, which is then placed next to lines of the poem that offer a picture of what Owen would hope the reader to define as a horrible existence worse than death. He lost his colour, far away from here, this brings to mind an image of blood draining out from a young man, as he begins to turn pale, the brightness of life has been lost in battle, this helps the readers feel the mans loneliness that he felt while suffering this fate. We are already aware that the subject has lost an arm and a leg, yet here we are told One time he liked a blood smear down his leg, he felt proud to have an injury, a small scar made him seem like a man, He remembered when seeing blood on his leg meant that it was a job well done and that he would receive more praise for his hard work., ironic as when he came back from war with a serious scar he feels ashamed and incomplete, this helps the build of sympathy from the readers. . The imagery of his life bleeding out of him

through the wound on his thigh, and the use of the word purple, a colour denoting life and vitality, shows that the ordeal the soldier had gone through when he had been injured had a deep impact on him, as he no longer feels alive or has any desire to live. The analogy drawn between playing sports and being a soldier in a war, though by no means new, is nevertheless effective. Along with highlighting the egoistic and vain motives the man had for joining the army, it also acts as a reminder to him that his pride had caused him the exact thing he had been proud of: he would never again run in a field or score a winning goal, he would never again be praised for being a hero; only pitied endlessly for being a cripple. The things which he used to boast about: the wounds received in a match, and being carried on the shoulders of his team mates; have become permanent sources of sorrow: he no longer has his legs, and cannot help but be carried around helplessly. This contrast is both chilling and distressing.

Owen uses "compassionate imagination" to establish a link between the soldier and the civilian in an effort to express the abominable losses that come as a result of war . Unfortunately, in so doing Owen magnifies the inferior role disability occupies in society, rather than calling it into question. That which has been given up and that which has been taken away subsumes the identity of the subject. Owen's onedimensional representation of disability ignores the will to survive and make the most of the opportunities offered by life, in whatever form it may take. Owen uses criticism and
mockery to prove his point that, war is an unnecessary evil and one should think before making serious decisions, not go by social norms or be pressurized into doing something for some cheers and jeweled hilts and smart salutes teaching the readers a lesson. The subject joins the war in an effort to feel desired or to create an identity for himself, an identity that is ultimately based on a lie about his age. The subject tries to pinpoint which intoxication leads him to such a decision: a victorious football game, a brandy and soda, or the "giddy jilts"? In each case there is an overabundance of ego involved; the subject seeks to capitalize on his ephemeral successes and perpetuate them as long as possible. In joining the war, he sees a way to do this, because society identifies those who go to war as heroes and those who do not as less than men. superficial

benefits of joining the military. show that those who return from the war injured are pitied for their loss, rather than being honored for their sacrifice.

The final stanza of the poem completes the circle that brings the reader back to the subject's self-dissolution. He has accepted society's estimation of his worth and will continue to follow the orders of a society that deems him as invalid. The speaker epitomizes the nondisabled persons fear over lack of control of his or her own bodies and fates.
Those times when his ability to use physical appearance and masculinity to please members of the opposite sex has passed. That change represents to him how useless, damaged and hopeless his life seems. Everyone has a quality about themselves that defines their identity and a social role that normalizes them. His obsession on women symbolizes something deeper. Something that keeps recurring in his recollections of the life he used to live before the war is his
active and successful interaction with women. Now he is left sexually incompetent and can no longer derive pleasure from the very things which had once been such a comfort to him.

The soldiers id or primal instinct wants to make his own rules in life, fearlessly without inhibitions or severely hindered. While for many it can be social norms or morals that hinder us from doing exactly what we desire, he has a different struggle.

Another feature of the writing is the use of active verbs and euphemism when discussing his injury. Owen also breaks up his syntax in stanza 4 as the young man recalls his enlisting. As he questions his thought processes and realizes the vanity and the hypocrisy evident in the process his control falters. The lines fragment as the sentences become short and broken. Owen places the reader into the soldiers head and forces us to share his anguish. The repeated why dont they come? haunts the reader as it is a question that we simply cannot answer and possibly fear to do so. Owen saw the disorder that war created, and I noticed that he
used irregularities of rhyme in the seven stanzas to reflect that disorder. Also, the poem of half rhyme gave his poetry a dissonant, disturbing quality that amplified his theme. His usage of language gave the poem an urgency and directness, and all the senses were utilized.

In this case the character's thoughts and actions reflect his desire to be free but instead he is trapped, oppressed, and repressed inside of his own body, mentally, physically, and emotionally. Hyphens and semi colons are used frequently to add dramatic pauses, allowing the reader to stop, think and reflect on what they have just read. In his depressed reflections, he has a dreamy, flashback revealing his subconscious thoughts, which compare his lowly state to his triumphant younger days.