The Manhunt Comparison

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'.

Both Wilfred Owen in his poem ‘Disabled’ and Kate Chopin in her short story ‘The Story of an Hour’ use contrast to explore the key themes and characters. Owen accentuates the contrast that exists between the women before and after the war. He uses contrast to show the reader how he had a girlfriend before the war and that she had helped to be part of the reason him to join up, but after the war, he is abandoned and his freedom has been stripped from him. By contrast, Chopin emphasises contrast partially using marriage in how her life was controlled by her husband before but now she is free as she has been widowed. The use of direct comparison in sentences shows the main character conflict of emotions being experienced with the concepts of freedom as opposed to love being argued as the strongest emotion.

The text, ‘The Things They Carried', is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried' shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lessening sanity of a medic as the constant death surrounds him; the trauma and guilt of all the soldiers after seeing their friends die, and feeling as if they could have saved them; and the deaths of the soldiers, the most negative impact a war

Undoubtedly, war can take a massive toll on one’s overall health. Although soldiers suffer horrific injuries during combat, their mind continues to take a beating behind the front lines. This concept is powerfully depicted in the novel Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden, where the lives of two soldiers, Xavier and Elijah, are profoundly changed forever both mentally and physically as a result of their experiences in the World War I. As the story progresses, their friendship and well-being begins to drastically deteriorate. Boyden effectively illustrates how Xavier and Elijah’s experiences on the front lines render them unable to go back to who they once were before the war.

Timothy Findley’s The Wars portrays the effects of war on soldiers in battle, as well as the members of family and friends that suffer from loss and insanity. As each character over the progression of the story is exposed to change, the character’s ability to adapt has a significant correlation with their survival, those that can quickly adapt to survive can manage to get by. Soldiers must be able to suppress the extreme stress on the battlefield. Those that cannot overcome these challenges do not survive in war. Murder is quickly pushed out of a soldiers mind, killing others in effort to protect their own life or the life of others around them. Findley demonstrates how war can negatively alter a person’s behaviour. This is seen through

Many people don’t comprehend how traumatic the life of a young fighter in World War I was. In my opinion, this book will especially help you understand this. The descriptive language describing the wounds and unpleasant content made me feel queasy at times, but also forced me to feel compassionate for the military troops. In this book, limbs are lost, animals such as horses are killed, starving soldiers dig through garbage for food, the troops are destroyed by poison gas, munitions, and bombs. The conditions the fighters went through in the war was dangerous and disturbing which makes me realize how fortunate my life is and causes me to feel compassion for the fighters because of what they had to struggle with.

​For many years war has been a huge part of history. Thousands of people go to war for their country and come back physically fine. But what people usually do not notice is the emotional distress and burden that the veterans come back with on their back. That is what drives the purpose of the book in “The things they carried”. Tim O’Brien wrote this book in way that shows how war can be part of the soldier for the rest of their life. Coming home veterans have to deal with individual sufferings, but the emotional baggage the soldiers bring also effect the people around them. The characters in the book the “The things they carried” portray this very well.

The effects of this issue are further reflected upon in Tim O’Brien’s war story The Things They Carried, where Vietnam War era veteran O’Brien narrates his fictional account of the war and its effects on its combatants as a way to cope with the inflicted grief and regret of battle. Throughout the story and through other veterans’ accounts, it is evident how storytelling can be an effective medium to assuage these mental effects of war on a veteran. Most prominently, war’s effects on soldiers are mainly physical with disabilities causing a lasting effect on those who once fought and now wish to adapt to civilian life. However, the idea of not being able to adapt completely lies with the lesser known effects of war inflicted disabilities, with PTSD mentally scarring soldiers for periods of their life and depression following suit. Like how hospitals and bandages heal bullet wounds, O’Brien proves how writing and storytelling serve as remedies to patch up the mental wounds caused by war.

The article, Understanding Critical Disability Studies, written by Geoffrey Reaume, illuminates his grandfather’s horrific experience in World War 1 and how he was dismissed as psychologically unfit due to sickness that was subsequently confirmed as shell shock. According to Reaume, World War 1 haunted his grandfather for the rest of his life like several veterans. Reaume further solidifies that his grandfather’s experience in the war can only be described as mud-spattered, noisy and deadly which triggered his symptoms of shock, and individuals who suffered psychological distress were seen as outcasts rather than heroes and fighters. Chiefly, the value of this article is gripping because of the terrors men faced in the war and ignorance they

Although the glorification of being your “nations hero and fighting” for your country may seem worthwhile, it can lead to major metal and physical destruction. Similar to the First World War, the suffering of soldiers still evident. It’s inevitable that war has always caused struggles, and will continue to do so. War’s abominable pain is a burden on almost everyone, and it is nearly impossible to escape. Erich Richard’s Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front describes life of the soldiers during world war one and the toll it takes on them.

This image is definitely not the glamorous picture of glory that, say army recruitment presents; worse, the soldiers are doing worse than civilians. As soon as the next stanza “[m]en marched asleep. Many had lost their boots” (5). They have lost their usual awareness and move mechanically; that doesn’t sound appealing! It gets worse: “[b]ut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind” (6). So now they’re limping, apparently wounded, covered in blood, and can’t even see? It worsens further, “[d]runk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots/ Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind” (7-8). The soldiers are so exhausted it incapacitates them, and they can no longer hear the bullets being fired. This poem sounds like a distorted nightmare, except the speaker is living it, and even reliving the torment of the soldier’s death while he is unconscious. Owen’s wording expresses that the soldiers are merely men, deteriorating and inconceivably overwhelmed the opposite of positive war poetry containing glory and honor.

Both the scenario explored here by Barker and the closure of Owen’s Disabled with demeaning rhetorical questions ‘And put him into bed? Why don't they come?’ demonstrate a crisis in masculinity and helplessness. However it could be suggested that although society overlooks what is hard to face in Disabled, the reader of Regeneration is exposed to worse sense of emasculation with the feeling of inadequacy and distance the patients of Craighlockhart experience only being enhanced by their treatment by women. Barker equally uses imagery to evoke emotion focusing closely on his post-war appearance, describing his forearms ‘the groove between radius and ulna was even deeper than a week ago’, not only suggesting that Burns is physically becoming weaker, but also mirroring the ever increased detachment from the man he felt he was- turning into the ‘thin yellow skinned man’ The Great war has forced him to become.

As the war was developing the pressure to take part in conflict grew increasingly. After training , Owen was labeled a second lieutenant. All his romantic notions was destroyed by the reality of war, water-logged trenches, barbed wire, bombardments and machine guns. After a near death experience Owen was transported to a hospital with concussion. But he still had the images of his many brothers and conrades laying motionless around him.

In the poem ‘Disabled’, poet Wilfred Owen portrays the horrors of war and the brutal aftermath by using powerful imagery, dramatic contrasts of pace and time, overwhelming irony and by creating a strong sense of sympathy for the soldier of this poem. The contrasts between health and illness, life and death feature greatly in the poem; this gives the reader a ‘before and after’ picture of the soldier’s (subject’s) life.

Wilfred Owen, poet of “Disabled”, recounts the desolating stories of a disabled soldier who has been mutilated by the unforgiving First World War, when he was badly shaken from shell-shock during the war. He presents the suffering of a soldier as an everlasting void of torment that threatens to tear his life into fragmented pieces of reminiscent memories.