Writing Resources
Dear Diary Today I read the poem disabled by Wilfred Owen and it caused me to envision the horrors grandfather must have endured when he took service in the war As the poem expressed the tormented thoughts and recollections of a teenaged soldier it was hard to get through even half of the poem as the vivid imagery was too gruesome and hard to bare The soldier Owen had written about had lost his limbs in battle and was confined utterly helpless to a wheelchair In reflecting upon grandfathers experiences I remember him telling me how he suffered through post traumatic stress disorder PTSD for many years He complained about limited treatment opportunities for veterinarians diagnosed with PTSD then for example during the time Owen wrote the poem comparative to now I started to analyse the poem further in collecting evidence to conclude treatment opportunities have improved but to an extent In the first stanza of disabled Owen depicts the young soldier in a dark isolated state as he sits in his wheelchair At this moment the reader learns the soldier has lost his legs in battle Owen uses repetition of words such as waiting and sleep to reinforce the sense that this soldier's life is interminable to him now There is evidence right at the beginning of the poem that post traumatic stress haunts the soldier as he is a fragment of the man he was losing a part of himself which he would never get back
