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Comparing War Poems 'Disabled And Refugee Blues'

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Recommended: How does wilfred owen use language to present humanity and the impact of war on people’s lives in ‘disabled’

‘Disabled’ written by Wilfred Owen is one of many anti- war poems that resulted from the brutality of World War I. It is a very effective and heart – rending poem that illustrates the harshness of war. Another anti-war poem, ‘Refugee Blues’, was written by W.H Auden, and conveys the difficulties of the life of a refugee and focuses on the issues of racism after World War II. Both ‘Disabled’ and ‘Refugee Blues’ express their perspective towards the subject differently, although the two poems are on the same side in terms of anti-war arguments. They both agree that war destroyed the lives of many. Both narrators in each poem have lost something vital to their happiness. In ‘Disabled’ it looks at war using a dark, depressing and disturbing manner, …show more content…

Owen describes the man’s life and his present condition over the seven stanzas, each with differing lengths. Sorrow and regret are threaded through every verse. The rhyming scheme is very inconsistent with different rhyming patterns in each stanza. On the other hand ‘Refugee Blues’ is a very structured poem with each stanza having three lines. The first two lines of each stanza are of the narrator addressing the issue and the last line is him breaking the news gently to his ‘dear’. The repetition on the last line of each stanza emphasizes the importance of the message but also softens the message. In comparison to the rhyming scheme in ‘Disabled’, in ‘Refugee Blues’ it is A-A-B. In ‘Disabled’ there are hyphens that are regularly used throughout the text, which are used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. Every second line in each stanza of ‘Refugee Blues’ ends on a colon, which changes the time frame. ‘Refugee Blues’ is written as if it was a piece of blues music. A piece of blues music is written in a minor chord, which represents sadness. Blues was considered sad/slave and therefore the general structure shows the grim reality of the situation. Here refugees are portrayed as slaves as they both are treated abominably and as less than human and are made to feel as if they have no sense of

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This stanza is implying that all refugees have no English background and therefore cannot "distinguish ESL from RSL". They are completely degrading refugee’s ability to learn a new language and judging their educational abilities based on their past experiences and culture. The poem also mentions in stanza 5 that refugee children have no respect for "institutions". Just because these children may have come from a predominantly violent culture, it does not mean that they have no respect or manners. As a culture, Australia needs to encourage refugees as much as possible.

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Likewise, the poem, Migrant Woman on a Melbourne tram, by Jennifer Strauss, establishes barriers of culture through the woman’s conspicuous peculiarity. This further creates a sense of isolation and oppression towards the migrant woman, once again reflecting the difficulties that immigrants endure. Furthermore, Strauss’ deliberate use of metaphor, with the words “Street-names in the glare/leap ungraspably from sight/ formless collisions of letters”, depicts to the audience the difficulties involved with roaming unfamiliar terrains, more specifically Australian landscape. Once again, Strauss conveys to the audience the struggles that an immigrant must overcome when going to a foreign country. However, this time she refers to language barriers and an unfamiliarity with the

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In the third stanza, he describes him being wounded by his father. In the fourth stanza, he gives off the image of him being beat by his father to bed. These images help the reader visualize what the narrator had to go through in his childhood. It gave the reader a feeling of how it felt like being in the narrator’s

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Blues music was created by African Americans in the deep South during the 19th century. One of the main characteristics of blues music that separates the blues from other musical genres is that blues themes are more than often based on personal adversity. One popular blues theme is traveling. When the theme of traveling comes to mind, adversity may not be the first thing one thinks of; however, traveling was historically used as a tool to oppress African Americans in the United States. During the years of slavery, it was common practice to deny African Americans the right to travel or to force African Americans to travel between unfamiliar plantations.

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It’s a lyrical pattern which the first sung line is repeated as the second one, then the third line is different.

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This contempt of emasculations is also made clear in Owen 's "Disabled". This poem discusses the faith of a teen soldier who has lost his limbs in the trenches and is confined to his wheelchair, utterly helpless. Relationships

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Through both of his poems, Dulce Et Decorum Est and Disabled, Owen clearly illustrates his feeling about war. Both of them convey the same meaning that war destroyed people’s lives. For Dulce Et, Decorum Est, it mainly illustrates soldier’s life during war, the dreadfulness of war, whereas, Disabled illustrates how war have damaged soldier’s life. Also, the saying that said that war it is lovely and honorable to die for your country is completely against his point of view. Owen conveys his idea through graphically describing his horrible experiences in war.

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Though the poet tries to create a happy mood at the beginning through her use of rhyme: “fell through the fields” and “the turn of the wheels” as well as reference to the “mother singing”, all is not happy. The word "fell" in the gives a sense of something sad and uncomfortable happening. This sense of sadness is heightened by one of the brothers “bawling Home, Home” and another crying. There is the use of personification in describing the journey: “the miles rushed back to the city” which expresses poet's own desire to go back, and the clever use of a list which takes us back to the place she has just left: “the city, the street, the house, the vacant rooms where we didn’t live

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The refugees in this case were the Jews. In the title “Refugee Blues”, “blues” is mentioned. Blues was a sad slow music which consisted of three line stanza and a lot of repetition for example “old passports can 't do that my dear old passports can 't do that.” The effect and purpose of these repetitions is for the poet to force the reader to linger on any points he feels are important, hence making a longer lasting impact on the reader.

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