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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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