How Owen And Frost Present Attitudes From Injury And Death

Explain how particular features of at least two of Wilfred Owen's poems set for study interact to affect your response to them.

Owen and Frost convey extreme experiences and feelings very powerfully and evoke it in a way for us the reader to imagine clearly. In Disabled, Owen conveys the image of death very vividly with immense use of imagery writing 'He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,' this darkness is referring to the sense that the soldier's life is interminable to him now. Owen is trying to tell us that this soldier's life has been cut short by the war and that he cannot be the same individual he was perhaps five to ten years earlier. Another example of strong imagery in Disabled which conveys extreme experiences and feelings is the good use of visual imagery where he writes 'Legless, sewn short at the elbow.' This powerful phrase gives us the reader an image of the soldier seated in a wheelchair with no legs as well as part of his arm 'deattached', this image being emphasised by the words 'Legless' and 'sewn short'.

Wilfred Owen uses language and poetic devices to evoke sympathy for the soldier in the poem by using in-depth descriptions. An example of this is in the first stanza where the soldier in the poem ‘shivered in his ghastly suit of grey’. The ‘g’ sound in the words ‘ghastly’ and ‘grey’ emphasises the horror of ‘ghastly’ combined with the dreariness of ‘grey’, which are now the two main features of his life. The word ‘ghastly’ shows something that is strange and unnatural. The adjective ‘grey’, which has connotations of bleakness, portrays an image of darkness and monotony. Furthermore, the verb ‘shivered’ shows that he is vulnerable and exposed. In the phrase, ‘Legless, sewn short at elbow’, the sibilance at the end of ‘Legless’, and in ‘sewn short’ tell us that the short-syllable words are ruthlessly to the point, so it emphasises the fact that the soldier has no arms and legs because of his wounds.

Throughout the poem there are many examples of contrast or juxtaposition in a majority of the stanzas. In the first stanza the veteran is sitting all alone in his wheelchair with his legs amputated. Owen describes the boys playing in the park. These boys are a direct juxtaposition to the veteran because they are able to run

The theme of loss is portrayed similarly in the two poems ‘Disabled’ and ‘Out, out-’. Both of these poems are about the protagonist dealing with physical loss as they both experience an accident. Both Wilfred Owen and Robert Frost manage to mesmerize their audience’s attention, and also sympathize for the protagonists’ misfortune. They do this by the use of many literary techniques which are obvious at times, but some are very subtle, such as similes, metaphors, personification, and contrasts.

This all aims at promoting the emotion of pity, to empathize upon the suffering forced upon the soldiers that Owen wishes the audience to feel, to recognize the irony on the glorification of war.

Owen uses the contrast of the soldiers’ state pre-war and post-war to highlight just how much the soldier has lost through going to war. Physically, pre-war, the soldier is described as ‘younger than his youth,’ and has an ‘artist silly for his face.’ Suggesting that his beauty is worth capturing permanently in paint. The words ‘younger ‘and ‘youth’ emphasise this man’s innocence and boyishness, the tautology places emphasis on how young he is thus outlining his immaturity before the war and making his loss at war even more tragic. The contrast once he has returned where Owen

This technique serves to emphasize the solemn and serious content. In stanza one, Owen describes the soldiers as they set off towards the army base from the front line. The simile "Bent double, like old beggars"(1) not only says that they are tired, but that they are so tired they have been brought down to the level of beggars who have not slept in a bed for weeks on end. Also, the simile "coughing like hags"(2) helps to depict the soldiers? poor health and depressed state of mind. Owen makes us picture the soldiers as ill, disturbed and utterly exhausted. He shows that this is not the government-projected stereotype of a soldier, in gleaming boots and crisp new uniform, but is the true illustration of the poor mental and physical state of the soldiers. By telling us that many of the platoon are barefoot, Owen gives us an idea of how awful the soldiers? journey already is; it then gets even worse. Owen tells us that the soldiers, although they must have been trained, still do not notice the deadly mustard gas shells being fired at them from behind; such is the extent of their exhaustion.

"Out, Out" is a great example of a typical Robert Frost poem. This narrative poem tells a story of human tragedy through the death of a young boy. The poem shows how fragile life can be and how it can be taken from people in an instant. The boy's tragic death is illuminated for the reader by a commentator watching the incident from the outside looking in. There is a lot of detail given to the reader early on describing the saw and the way it "snarled and rattled." These details and the emphases on the boy's age and his wanting to leave work early made the situation destined for tragedy. It was as if Frost was preparing us for the tragedy to come, "And nothing happened: day was all but done"(9). This suggests that something is definitely going to happen. Another clue that something awful is about to happen is the way the saw is personified it: " leaped out of the boy's hand" (16). As it is described, the saw jumped out of the boy's hand when he is called for supper, "As if to prove that saw knew what supper meant" (15). Through the use of onomatopoeia, the saw is also made to sound vicious like an attack dog when it is heard to snarl and rattle. The personification and description of the noises of the saw makes defiantly it seem like a major character in the poem.

Robert Frost’s poem “Out, Out –“ is about a boy who has his arm sawed off during work and asks his sister not to let the doctor amputate his arm, he then realizes he’s lost too much blood and then dies while doctors try to save him. After his death everyone else continues on with their work and lives. Frost uses a lot of end-stopped lines, enjambment, repetition and personification among others in his lines of poetry.

In Robert Frost’s poem “Out, Out-” the poet uses literary devices to describe the setting and thorough meaning of the poem. Frost has created a character during World War 1, and the character gets injured and dies from that injury. Frost reveals imagery, diction, and figurative language.

Frost to save his son from his disease, to the inevitable death of the young boy in the poem.

In both of the poems “Out, Out’’ and ‘’Disabled’ ’has a similar theme of loss and is shown throughout each poem. Both of the poem deals with the subject of physical loss. The characters of these poems both experience losses from an accident. They create an effect, where the audience will show empathy to the two poems. In order to create this outstanding effect, they both used similar literary techniques. Techniques such as, metaphor, simile, rhyme, repetition and etc. As each technique is used as the theme of loss has increased, which means that more sympathy is to be shown when the readers are reading the poem. Slowly the poem gives a negative image to readers.

Owen creates pity for the soldier by explaining how he has been forced into a wheelchair. This is shown in the text when Owen writes “He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark”. This implies that the Soldier does not want to be in the wheelchair because it is too early for the soldier to die. Owen creates pity by using pathetic fallacy. The soldier who is “waiting for dark” is ultimately a euphemism for death, showing that he'd rather die than be in the care home which he is currently in. Furthermore, Owen suggests the Soldier does not want to be in the care home again when he writes “Why don’t they come And put him into Bed?” This suggests. that the soldier can no longer complete tasks for himself which creates pity for the soldier again because if the soldier was not in the wheelchair, the Soldier could of done this for himself.

Owen’s visual poetic framework signifies the World War One soldier’s immeasurable suffering and his very outrage, unfathomable disgust and moral indignation towards the role of the government. ‘Futility’ begins with an optimistic tone and shifts in stanza two to a tone of anger and despair to accommodate the change in the speaker’s mindset. Owen explains that the sun that once brought warmth and new life is now perceived as insufficient and helpless in the face of the destruction of humanity facing the speaker, through the inhumaneness of war. The use of the word ‘snow’ conjures images of winter weather that opposes the initial metaphor of the sun. This striking transition of wording symbolises the little difference between life and death