Robert Graves And Wilfred Owen
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Robert Graves And Wilfred Owen
Although the poems "Recalling War" by Robert Graves and "Mental
Cases" by Wilfred Owen are both concerned with the damage that war does to
the soldiers involved, they are different in almost every other respect. Owen's
poem examines the physical and mental effects of war in a very personal and
direct way - his voice is very much in evidence in this poem - he has clearly
seen people like the 'mental cases' who are described. It is also evident that
Owen's own experiences of the war are described: he challenges the reader with
terrifying images, in order that the reader can begin to comprehend the causes
of the madness. Graves on the other hand is far more detached. His argument is
distant, using ancient images to explore the immediate and long-term effects of
war on the soldier. The poem is a meditation on the title, Graves examining the
developing experiences and memories of war with a progression of images and
metaphors. "Mental Cases" is a forceful poem, containing three
substantial stanzas which focus on different aspects of Owen's subject. The
first stanza is a detailed description of what the 'mental cases' look like.
Their outward appearance is gruesome, "Baring teeth that leer like
skulls'", preparing the reader for the even more horrifying second stanza.
The second verse concentrates on the men's past experiences, the deaths they
have witnessed and the unimaginable nightmares they have lived through:
"Multitudinous murders they once witnessed." The last stanza concludes
the poem, explaining how the men's lives are haunted by their experiences, they
go mad because the past filters into every aspect of their present lives, the
men retreat away from the memories and into madness. The form of Owen's poem is,
therefore, built around three main points: the appearance of the men, their
experiences, and the effect this has on their lives. In Graves' poem the form is
also key to understanding the poem, but perhaps in a less obvious way.
"Recalling War" has five stanzas, in a form that corresponds to the
psychological emotions and physical experience war provokes. The first stanza
describes how Graves expects the war to be remembered twenty years after the
event: the wounds have healed and the blind and handicapped men forget the
injuries the war caused, as their memories are blurred by the distance of time;
"The one-legged man forgets his leg of wood". In the second stanza
Graves moves on to question the nature of war. This v...
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