War-Torn Poet

More than just representing the physical pain of a soldier wounded in battle, the poem “Disabled,” by Wilfred Owen, describes quite accurately the mental and emotional pain one experiences after losing something vitally important in one’s life.

The speaker describes the subject as having, “waiting for dark, and shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,” using potent figurative language through the use of the color words “dark” and “grey” to elucidate something more than just the colors themselves (567). Black and grey often associate themselves with emptiness, a lack of presence of one or more things. In this case, the subject of the poem (a fallen soldier) lost not only his physical might and ability, but also his mental awareness and desire. That the soldier not only sees these colors, but in fact waits for and wears them demonstrates his complete emptiness. Waiting for the dark has become easier than simply looking into it; one might even say the soldier welcomes the emptiness. The soldier has lost the desire to fight the darkness he feels from losing his physical capabilities.

For soldiers with tour-ending injuries, I would submit that often the hardest part of recovery is the mental one. Evidently, this soldier signed on very young, just out of high school, and feels he lost his youth when he was injured in the war. Because Wilfred Owen only lived 25 years, and the poem is about a wounded soldier, and Owen himself was a soldier in the British Army during WWI, it’s safe to assume that the subject of the poem is Owen himself, and the poem deals with his depression and shell-shock following his first tour in the Army. He feels that he lost his youth in the blood of war, saying, “There was an artist silly for his face, for it was younger than his youth, last year” (568). The alliterative sound of “younger than his youth last year” emphasizes the fleeting youth Owen feels he had; at only 23 years of age he was institutionalized for what we now call PTSD, and he quickly lost all the illusions and dreams that often come with a youthful spirit. Though he hasn’t been significantly physically broken, the war truly broke something fundamental about Owen’s being, and sometimes it simply isn’t possible to recover from a break that big.

With his broken spirit, I don’t think Owen ever really recovered, or was able to tape together the salvageable pieces of himself after his first few years of war. He says, “Tonight he noticed how the women’s eyes passed from him to the strong men who were whole” (569). Now, clearly the poem doesn’t refer to any major and lasting physical deficiency, as Owen wasn’t permanently injured physically, but an important point on the topic of psychological wellbeing and wholeness comes up. He feels as if even psychological scars are evident and telling, and feels set apart from the other men because of his mental scars. Because he can very clearly see his injuries, Owen believes that others can as well. I think he completely loses his will to do anything but meekly exist until someone or something comes to take him away. He asks, “Why don’t they come and put him into bed? Why don’t they come?” (569). I think this is extremely indicative of the severity mental injuries can have on a person. Owen, when he was injured, was completely capable of taking care of himself, but he was so far gone mentally that he couldn’t really bring himself to complete even the simplest task. In essence, I think the poem may be asking more about why someone won’t come and put the soldier from the poem out of his misery, rather than just “to bed.”

Overall, this poem brings up important questions about being mentally broken, and how much it really takes to completely de-commission someone just through psychological injuries. The human brain tends to be pretty resilient, so for Owen to be so damaged that he essentially wrote a poem describing his want for the pain to be all over, I think he really must have had too many pieces to be able to tape them all together and come out looking like a normal person ever again. I even wonder if maybe he wasn’t too upset about dying – some think he sought out a position on the front lines in 1918 to imitate one of his admired friends, but I think maybe he wanted something to validate all that pain: either victory or death. 

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and its Ties to Lucifer

We spent Wednesday in class talking about the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Coleridge, and after the class discussion I spent a lot of time thinking about it. After some careful consideration and re-reading the poem, I came to a rather interesting conclusion.

Throughout the poem, the action seems to bounce between good and evil, the Mariner never sure exactly which side he lies on. The very beginning of the Mariner’s story talks about the beauty of the sun, how “he shone bright,” for all the men on his ship (378). However, the story takes a dark turn when the Mariner shoots and kills a good omen, the albatross.

I would submit that the entire first half of the poem, if not the whole thing, is a telling of Lucifer’s fall, and God’s punishment afterwards. Now, going on this analysis there are two distinct alternatives for how the telling plays out. The first option is that the Albatross represents Lucifer, and the Mariner represents God; shooting the albatross with the crossbow is a physical representation of the angel Lucifer falling from grace, and his punishment is to not be present in the world to see humanity take its shape. While this is a very good argument, I’m much more partial to the second option. The second (and more probable) option is that the Mariner is Lucifer, and the Albatross a representation of God. The mariner, “with [his] crossbow” shoots the Albatross from the sky, killing it (380). The use of a crossbow in killing the Albatross is instrumental, because of its relationship with the cross. Lucifer, when he was cast to Hell, believed he fell because he loved God too much. The Mariner kills the physical representation of God with an item of significant religious imagery, physically demonstrating Lucifer’s overwhelming love for his Father, so much so that it hurts God.

Moreover, when the Mariner thinks all is lost, and he’ll never find home, he sees life, and says:

“Beyond the shadow of the ship,

I watched the water-snakes:

They moved in tracks of shining white,

And when they reared, the elfish light

Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship

I watched their rich attire:

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,

They coiled and swam; and every track

Was a flash of golden fire” (386).

That the Mariner welcomes the snakes and fire is no hallucination, or “just happy to see something” attitude. In essence, this can be seen as Lucifer accepting his place in Hell, and welcoming the gates to him, because he realizes that his power is indeed great enough to bring the gates of Hell to him. The Mariner delights in seeing these signs of evil, instead of cowering away, which greatly supports the hypothesis that the Mariner represents Lucifer, and the poem is a loose telling of his fall from grace.

Furthermore, the Mariner’s ultimate fate is to live in agony, so people know his story. He says, “That agony returns:/ And till my ghastly take is told,/ This heart within me burns” (396). This, really, would be Lucifer’s Hell on Earth. Rather than being allowed to rule his domain in Hell, no matter how dislikeable that really is, God forces Lucifer to live on the planet among those whom he refused to love in the first place (Lucifer told God that he could not love man more than God because they were violent creatures who didn’t deserve the love Lucifer had to give), and teach them of his Father, try to make them see why God is great. Because, Lucifer believes he still loves God, that God is great no matter the situation, or what he did to Lucifer. The Mariner even says, “For the dear God who loveth us,/ He made and loveth all” (397). Even in his greatest punishment, Lucifer sees how much God loves, and yet still refuses to love humanity with all the strength and conviction with which he loved God, and that is why he is doomed to his Hell, teaching those he hates about God and his love.

In a nutshell: the mariner is Lucifer (not Satan/the Devil, but Lucifer. Important distinction, because Lucifer is the archangel that fell from grace, Satan and Devil are the names we give to him to embody the evil we believe is in his soul) and the Albatross a physical representation of Lucifer’s betrayal of God and fall from grace.