Wilfred Owen Poetry Analysis

Wilfred Owen is an English Poet who wrote poetry about the First World War. Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 in a town in England called Oswestry. He served in the Artists Rifles regiment in the British army. Owen was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1915. He served for his home country, England, during the First World War. In 1917, he was wounded during the war and was diagnosed with shell shock. While he was wounded, he met a poet named Siegfried Sassoon and began to write poetry himself. He became one of the most well-known poets around the world for his brutally realistic poetry regarding the First World War. Many examples of Wilfred Owen’s life experiences, specifically the horrors of war he endured, can be seen in many of his poems …show more content…
The poem is about a wounded soldier, which the reader can infer to be Wilfred Owen. The poem states, “Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes” (line 34). Owen was wounded in battle and spent much of his time in hospitals. His wounds suffered from the war can likely contribute towards his disgust towards war. “Owen was sent to a series of hospitals between 1 May and 26 June 1917 because of severe headaches. He thought them related to his brain concussion, but they were eventually diagnosed as symptoms of shell shock” (Poetry Foundation p.1). It was at this hospital where he met his friend and mentor, Siegfried Sassoon. The poem, unlike many of his other poems, has a calm tone to it. The reader can infer from the tone of the poem that Owen felt a sense of peace in the hospital as it was the only time he could escape from the horrors of war. The time served in the hospitals were a time for Owen to begin to develop his skills as a poet. He spent most of his time with Sassoon, a fellow poet. Owen not only talked about himself in, “Disabled,” but also talked about fellow wounded soldiers and their depressed nature. “Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park / Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, / Voices of play and pleasure after day” (lines 3-5). In this quote, Owen talks about a fellow soldier in the hospital who has lost his legs. The …show more content…
“However, after Owen’s initiation to the battlefield and his treatment for shellshock at Craiglockhart where he came under the sway of Siegfried Sassoon’s hardened, satirical poetry, another element begins to emerge in his verse: realism. Owen’s realism creates a distinctive tension in his poems” (Jackson p.168). The realism used in Owen’s poems highlight the horrors of war. In the poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen uses realism in the quote, “Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, / But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; / Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots” (lines 5-7). The quote describes the daily life of the soldiers in the poem. The soldiers were constantly on the move, so much so that they could barely carry on. The quote provides the reader with insight into the daily life of the soldiers. The quote shows the realism of what war entails, constantly moving on to the next position to fight, which provides the reader with another image of a horror encountered during war. Owen can use realism in his poems to describe war because war was something that Owen experienced for much of his life and had first-hand knowledge of all of the horrors that war entails. Wilfred Owen can use realism in his poems to describe what the soldiers went through during the night in his poem, “Exposure.” A quote from the poem reads, “Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent... /