Human Suffering In 'Disabled And Refugee Blues'

2. Compare the ways in which human suffering is presented in “Disabled” and ‘‘Refugee Blues’’.

The poem ‘Disabled’ was written in the midst of the First World War. The word ‘disabled’ gives the poem a feeling of boldness, of the brutal reality of warfare; how people are defined by their disability, and no longer able to achieve things on their own. The poem considers the illusion of war as glamorous, and stresses the violence of battle. The writer, Owen, also illustrates what impacts the war could bring to an individual, and the permanent loss of physical ability. ‘‘Refugee Blues’’, by W.H. Auden was written a few months before the outbreak of the Second World War. ‘Refugee’ emphasises their escape from persecution, their loss of identity,

He is isolated, poignant, solemn, all he can do is sit in his wheelchair, helpless to everything that’s happening around him, only able to watch and listen, to the ‘voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, voices of play and pleasures after day.’ His disability marks him different from other people—‘all of them touch him like some queer disease.’ The persona is a representative of all those soldiers that suffered due to conflicts between their country’s politicians. The poets tells the tale of the cruel reality of how war really is, and it’s completely different from what is portrayed in the posters.

The major themes in ‘Refugee Blues’ is about human suffering, about man’s inhumanity to man, about the freedom and renewal of the natural world. Human suffering is portrayed in the discrimination of the German Jews, about how even animals in nature have a place to stay, have an identity, have a chance of survival. In comparison with the animals, the Jews don’t have a hope in surviving the war, they are caught up in the war between politicians’ disputes. They don’t understand how they would allow man’s inhumanity to man, and this was very much conveyed in the