How Does Owen Present The Theme of Suffering in His Poems

HOW DOES OWEN PRESENT THE THEME OF SUFFERING IN HIS POEMS?
Suffering is a key theme in Owen’s poetry. His use of language, structure and
form, especially imagery and onomatopoeic devices allow us as readers to
get a better sense of the terrible ordeals that World War One soldiers lived
through.
The use of structure in Owen’s poetry provides interesting points to consider

when dealing with the theme of suffering. In the poem ‘Disabled’, for
example, the rhyme scheme is very coherent, suggesting a sense of stability
in the narrator’s emotional state, which could perhaps imply that whilst he
suffers from a highly traumatising physical injury, his psychological suffering
is nowhere near as severe as the soldier described in the poem ‘Mental
Cases’. Here, the rhyme scheme is unusual. The rhymes initially appear
seven lines apart, but gradually move closer together in the second and third
stanzas, which suggests to me a sense of reeling, almost as if the person in
question is beginning to lose control of their thoughts, showing that the
emotional trauma of war is enough to render a person so mentally unstable
that they come close to being declared clinically insane. Contextually, it was
not unusual for a soldier to be declared mentally unstable, bordering on
insane as a result of PTSD. During the war, many soldiers who returned from
the field with what we now know to be Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, were
painted as cowards, who were not ‘manly’ enough to be a soldier, and were
often institutionalised in the hope that treatments which nowadays would
almost certainly result simultaneously in a doctor losing their job, and a
patient’s mind being damaged beyond repair, could improve the soldiers’
mental state enough to allow them to return to the field.
This can also be linked to the broken sonnet structure in ‘Anthem for Doomed
Youth’. The rhyme scheme in the sestet of Owen’s somewhat ironic poem
deviates from the rhyme scheme of the octave, breaking the conventions of
the form, which could be perceived as a metaphor for soldiers in the war-
going off to fight excited about the prospect of defending their country, and
then coming back (if they make it) broken, having deteriorated incredibly
quickly, and often continuing to worsen in the institutions they were placed
in, as a result of the ‘cowardice’ they were accused of. One interpretation of
why Owen chooses this technique could be that the octave is a metaphor for
the propaganda used to recruit young men to fight, in that it fits conventions,
with a typical rhyme scheme and structure, and that the sestet breaking
away from the conventions of the form is Owen’s way of telling the
propaganda’s intended audience that war is not all it’s cracked up to be. It
could, perhaps, also be Owen’s way of showing his anger at so-called
‘armchair patriots’ like he did in his first drafts of ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’,
which he dedicated to Jessie Pope, a well-known armchair patriot, that Owen
was notably very critical of.
As well as suffering psychologically as a result of war, Owen uses his poetry

to show the damage war causes to relationships, whether it’s family or
friendship, showing an example of suffering that isn’t typically written about
in literature, perhaps because, contextually, soldiers were painted as cowards
for showing emotion at the time Owen was writing, which is still reflected in
the patriarchal society we live in today. In the poem ‘Disabled’, the narrator
asks ‘why don’t they come?’, possibly in referral to the nurses who are
supposed to help put him to bed, but also possibly referring to a family that
no longer comes to visit for an unspecified reason. It could be that they were
killed in the conflict, or maybe they choose not to visit because they can’t
stand to watch the soldier suffer, which could be connected to the line in
‘Mental Cases’ that says ‘treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter’,
suggesting to me that this soldier doesn’t receive visitors either. Focusing on
Owen’s use of the past tense implies that the soldier may not be allowed
visitors, because his emotional suffering, possibly as a result of PTSD, has
rendered him too fragile to see anybody. This demonstrates an example of
emotional suffering as a result of the physical damage war causes, in the
sense that it is likely that the soldiers’ mental stability will be shaken even
further because they have little to no contact with their loved ones, which
causes relationships to break down, causing further emotional trauma. This
may bear reference to the practices used in Bedlam. Although it has been
closed since 1770, Bedlam can be used as a prime example of the treatment
used to supposedly improve the symptoms suffered by those deemed
clinically insane. One of the most notable facts about Bedlam was that it
became almost a zoo for the public, who frequently came into the hospital to
gawk at the patients. Could it perhaps be that the hospitals in Owen’s poetry
didn’t allow visitors for fear of the practice of Bedlam becoming
commonplace again?
There is also a connection to ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ here. There is a line
that says ‘no mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells’, which could be
interpreted as soldiers losing the connections they have with family and
friends as a result of either loss of life, or being hospitalised due to
illness/injury. It suggests that it’s not just the soldiers who are suffering,
whether that’s physically or psychologically. The people they love most are
also suffering for fear of losing their family and friends. This quote can also be
linked to ‘Exposure’, in which Owen’s narrator states that ‘love of God seems
dying’, causing the reader to outpour grief for the people that lived through
this traumatic time. They are suffering so terribly that they are beginning to
lose faith in their religion, which shows just how severely people at the time
suffered as a result of the damage the war did, both physically and
emotionally.

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HOW DOES OWEN PRESENT THE THEME OF SUFFERING IN HIS POEMS?

The use of structure in Owen’s poetry provides interesting points to consider

As well as suffering psychologically as a result of war, Owen uses his poetry

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