Essay: ‘Disabled’ and ‘Out, Out −’ (poems)

The poem ‘Disabled’ is an elegiac poem, which has a main concept of showing the horrific consequences of war. The theme of loss is emphasised using a nostalgic sense as the subject reminisces about the days when he was once noticed and loved. Even though the poem ‘Out, Out −’ also strikes an elegiac tone, it is a narrative as Frost tells a story of a young boy who cuts his hand off when his sister comes to tell him that it is “supper”. Through this, Frost explores the futility of life and the hardships of child labour, which had led to many children suffering the ultimate loss, death, as the boy in ‘Out, Out −’. Despite the most obvious loss in these two poems being the physical loss, there are also the loss of relationships with family as well as with the natural world, hope and freedom for the future, and innocence.
Firstly, both poems have a main theme of loss of physical ability, with the most extreme case being death. This is key because it is presented at the very start, in the title of the poem ‘Out, Out −’, which is an allusion to William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, when Macbeth is shocked to hear of his wife’s death and comments on the brevity of life when saying: “out, out brief candle”, referring to how unpredictable and fragile life can be. This title also relates to the narrative as the poem is also about similar concepts. The theme of physical loss is also communicated in ‘Out, Out −’ with the constant use of personification, and an example of this would be the personification of the Buzz Saw which constantly “buzzes” and “snarls”, while jumping out of the boy’s hand in “excitement”. The line: “leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap” as well as the word “excitement” used to describe the saw helps to create an image in the readers mind through personification that the saw has a mind of its own. This is used later on to help display the theme of loss later on in the narrative. The poem is penned in blank verse with deviations from iambic pentameter to create a rhythm for when the reader reads the poem, which helps to create tension to help display the loss.
Similarly, in ‘Disabled’, the title also penetrates the idea of suffering. The idea of physical loss is established in the first line where Owen says that the disabled man is sat in a “wheeled chair” and goes on to describe him as “legless” and “sewn short at elbow”, showing that he is unable to do things for himself, as he is limbless. This is evident because the first stanza says that he is “waiting for dark”, suggesting boredom, especially as he feels that “gathering sleep had mothered [his negative thoughts] from him”. The verb “mothered” has connotations of being caring and comforting, which emphasises how desperate he is, since for younger people, sleep is generally a hated thing as they find it “boring”. As well as this, the end of the first stanza also invites the reader to accept the subject as being dependent and child-like, as sleep “mothered” him from the voices. However, in the first stanza most of this melancholy mood is enhanced by the description of how the character waited for the dark and “shivered in his ghastly suit of grey”, which reinforces an emptiness as though there is nothing left for him in life and for this he is depressed. Additionally, the phrase “waiting for dark” suggests that he is waiting for night and there is a cyclical emptiness about the phrase which strongly evokes pathos in a sense that the persona has lost his meaning in life and the will to live life as its fullest. These comparisons between past and present feelings and activities is one of the most effective techniques used in the poem ‘Disabled’ because it really emphasises how the loss has changed his activities.
Another time where comparisons between past and present is used to this effect is when Owen talks about the loss of relationships. This includes relationships directly, such as with girls, as well as indirectly, with the speaker as well as the reader. In the very first vignette, the reader already finds that the speaker occupies a privileged position, because he has no first-hand experience of what it is like to be an amputee and is merely an observer. The speaker, as well as a reader, only sees a “legless” man, “waiting for dark,” dressed in a “ghastly suit of gray”, when they look at the disabled man. This pathetic image proffered to the reader creates a relationship based on pity, meaning that the reader places a high value on his functioning body while devaluing the losses of the subject. “Waiting for dark”, even though the literal meaning is that he is waiting for the night, could also be interpreted as waiting for death, and the “ghastly suit of gray” may as well be the vestige of a ghost. The subject who is seated near a window, hears male children at play in the park, “saddening” him until sleep “mothered” the voices from him. The reader is to assume, as Owen has assumed, that the subject is saddened by memories of times past, when he, too, would play in the park with the other boys, leading the reader to assume that “play and pleasure after day” are no longer available to the subject. This is also evident in the second vignette, where Own delves, in more detail, into the subject’s past, when he was nondisabled. As a contrast to the first stanza, where the language and imagery is bleak and foreboding, the second stanza begins with colourful images of the town, before the subject acquired his injury. This time, the discussion is centred on women and how the subject will no longer be able to enjoy their presence or company, how slim girls’ waists are, or how warm their subtle hands”, for girls now “touch him like some queer disease”. The use of the word “queer” is an example of the subject’s social displacement, which connotes homosexuality, as well as suggests that society has made him what he has become.
Although ‘Out, Out −’ also talks about the loss of relationships, it is evident that the boy has not lost many. Even though he has died, so he will never see his family again, the reader can infer that there was not much of a loving relationship in the first place. When initially reading the poem, I found that the most striking element was not that the boy had died but the essence that life infinitely goes on, and no life is indicated as more important than the other. Frost expresses this by showing that the single life of the boy is insignificant towards a universal scale, which is shown by the use of a neutral tone to describe how the boy dies. In the line “little – less – nothing! – and that ended it”, the word “it” connotes similarity and unworthiness as “it” can be used to describe anything. Similarly, there is even an impression that the death of the boy is insignificant to those who had known him. This is shown in the line “no more to build on there” because the workers who didn’t die just returned to their work, almost ignoring the boy. A sense of helplessness is created, and a full stop is used to show that the pleas have stopped and there is still no effect. Furthermore, in the start of the poem, Frost creates a normal and routine atmosphere, which foreshadows that even though the boy has died by the end of the poem, it is still a normal day, making his life seem insignificant.
Furthermore, both poems demonstrate a loss of hope and freedom for the future. ‘Out, Out –’ exemplifies how a young boy’s life comes to an ill-fated endue to an accident concerning a buzz saw which severs his hand off – a loss of life and the human condition which corresponds to ‘Disabled’, describing the experiences of a soldier who was come back from war but as a social outcast due to his immobility – he lost his youth which is the prime of his life, his human condition. However, both poems show similarity in the fact that both personas have lost a vital part of their body which; in a sense completes them physically, mentioned earlier on in the essay, and mentally. Additionally, the fact that these body parts are important towards their work and their social life without either a heavy impact is placed upon them. Ultimately, the personas life and livelihood has been affected in ‘Disabled’, furthermore how in a sense the incident has killed him on the inside yet he still has to live with the emotional scars. Owen uses irony as he indicates that the persona himself “threw away” his legs merely because of foolish reasons to enlist which now leaves him “legless” and “sewn short at elbow” clarifying his disabilities. Whereas in contrast with ‘Out, Out −’ in which the boy has died because of shock in which the human condition that encompasses his experience as a living being had been stripped away from him – he had lost his mortal entities. This is also parallel
in the structure of the two poems because there is a singleness to the poem ‘Out, Out −’ because of its one-stanza construction. This single stanza reflects the swiftness of the boy’s accident and fate as well as the isolation of the unfortunate incident. Without a rhyme scheme, the verse also moves more quickly than if it were divided into stanzas and had rhyming end words that would separate ideas. On the other hand, Owens’s ‘Disabled’ is divided into six stanzas with alternating lines that rhyme with each other, although this pattern is sometimes broken. The stanzas are not uniform in the number of lines that each has, either. Therefore, the speed is broken as in stanza 5, a short, slow stanza to give the reader time to ponder the tragic effects of the soldier’s return as an incomplete man, and the dilating time of the stanza also represents the endless suffering of the man.
Another aspect of mutual loss is the poems ‘Disabled’ and ‘Out, Out −’ is the loss of innocence through harsh experience. Even though the subjects of both poems have suffered through harsh experience, it is noticeable that the man in ‘Disabled’ is suffering through youthful, stupid decisions, but for the boy in ‘Out, Out −’, despite it also being easily evited, it was less the boy’s fault. In ‘Disabled’, Owen blends in the idea that war is ignoble as Owen contrasts the preconceptions of war the persona had initially through listing the “jewelled hilts for daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes – Esprit de corps” to further signify that war is the opposite of the initial thought. Pathos is also accentuated through the realisation of the persona that the persona himself had “threw away his knees” – which indicates that he is responsible and he knows it but is still living with this awful heart-breaking realization. Owen’s ‘Disabled’, similar to Frost’s ‘Out, Out −’ also plays out the theme of regret but it is clearly more frequent than in ‘Disabled’. In ‘Disabled’ Owen once again portrays the character’s regret by mainly contrasting ‘before’ and ‘after’ of the person’s life. Nonetheless, the regret that is shown in the poem is primarily how the character is disappointed with himself for bringing upon his current situation – he regrets the foolish reasons that made him join war and regrets how he tried to impress the “giddy jilts” the girls of low value instead of sincerely assessing the value of his own life. What is really powerful is how the persona lists all his reasons and thoughts on war – some he could not even remember clearly as he “wonders why he asked to join” proving to himself that his reasons were foolish and insignificant to the extent that it places no special place in his memories. In the passage there are a lot of pauses to slow down the extract contrasting with how before enlisting he took things too fast and was too hasty which conveys that as he has now mentally aged, he has regrets as he has time to think over – the emptiness spurs up pathos within the readers.
Nevertheless, in ‘Out, Out −’, Frost crafts a sense of poignant melancholy sadness through a sense of the boy’s loss of innocence at an early age as he has to carry out labour intensive work which this regret will also emphasize pathos. “The boy counts so much when saved from work” conveys that the boy has lost so much not to mention has so much to lose; family, youth was no a main part of his dismal life, he misses out on the beautiful nature in Vermont – Frost contrasts this by describing the sunsets and the mountains etc. However, there is also a thought of possibility– “the sunset far into Vermont” having the emphasis on “far” therefore indicates that although this beautiful lasting scene will go on and on is a vista of potential that the boy could go a long way – the sun stretches into the horizons and so could the boy in a sense, and because there is the inclusion of the essence of time, Frost forebodes that time is reaching the end as the sunset reaches the horizon. Regret – another source of this sadness shown in ‘Out, Out −’ is mainly depicted in the last half of the poem when the boy had just cut of his hand – there is a moment of terrible realization as the boy gave a “rueful laugh”, which indicates the sense of chaos and confusion, thus we are made to pity the boy. What Frost creates is the regret that the boy has missed out on his childhood, his youth however the boy does not show this as much as the persona whom sympathizes with the boy which we know that the persona wanted to “call it a day, I wish they might have said, to please the boy”,
the persona had witnessed the boy’s life therefore is regretful that nobody gave the boy a break, no one wanted to “please the boy by giving him the half hour”. Because of this the regret enhances this idea of the boy’s loss of youth through his absence of the human condition, even before death his life was not that of a young child. Moreover, the pace of the poem is hastened to form a feeling of panic that the boy is overcome with as he shouts “Don’t let him cut my hand off – The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!” the speech itself implores directly to the reader as a desperate plea as it is a direct speech. Furthermore, we get the impression that there is so much panic and pain as the unusual syntax is used to show that nothing is coming out right. Additionally, the frequent of which speeds up the pace keeps the flow of the context concise and exciting. Standing out from the boy’s speech are the words “doctor” and “sister” because not only are they nouns but they are only polysyllabic words. This generates a premonition and a sense of foreboding that the boy may very well lose life in addition to the desperate pleading atmosphere that is created in the midst of the beautiful mountains of Vermont which is a contrast of setting – peaceful serenity against painful, desperate commotion of the boy.
Finally, both poems present a feeling of loss with the natural world. In ‘Disabled’, the true quintessence of this would rather about how he had risked his life and was so close to losing this fragile life in war as “half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race” as well injuries and wounds that “spurted from his thigh” – reinforcing how war is ignoble as it strips away life, tears away your soul, things that are important to you and things that complete you. The last stanza in particular shows how he will have to live his life in hospitals – this is a sad and dismal life, a long and monotonous one which on another note contrasts with ‘Out, Out −’ in the sense that it is a long journey to death for the character who awaits death itself – for the character, he will have to live with himself for an elongated period, there is a sense that he is waiting in vain, he is mourning over his losses in a sense – he still has his life but his lifetime deems not as significant as his youth. During his youth, the poem mentions that he used to spend a lot of time outside playing football where “he liked a blood-smear down his leg” because it meant that he was carried “shoulder high” afterwards. In addition to how he “poured it down shell holes till veins ran dry” – “it” being his liveliness and his “colour” – the youth of his prime which as Owen describes “half his life” had been wasted in the “hot race” which now the persona has to spend “a few sick years in institutes, isolated from the community and that of his past. A further sense of pathos is also generated by the treatment that the persona receives from his peers and community as well as how this had contrast with how he was treated before when he was young and popular and although the persona is still young, mentally he has aged as he has been through mass trauma as we learn from the fact that Owen states “Now, he is old – He’s lost his colour very far from here – and half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race and leap of purple spurted from his thigh”. Stanza three paints a grotesque image nonetheless – there is further evidence that not only has the persona aged mentally as mentioned before but he has also aged physically as “his back will never brace”, another condition for the elderly. The irony that he did this to himself makes this even more tragic in a sense that he did this to himself leaving us to pity this soul whom was responsible of the loss of his vivacity. On the contrary, less significantly, the boy from ‘Out, Out −’ has also lost his relationship with the natural world, but in different aspects since he is never able to do a “man’s” job ever again, as well as not being able to participate in normal activities for a boy his age such as playing outdoors. Throughout the poem, Frost seems to have emphasised the youth and innocence of the boy, but is being forced into adulthood at a young age. Phrases such as “child at heart” and the colloquial phrase “big boy” stress the childishness since it is often a phrase said to younger children.
Ultimately, the two poems are similar in that the main message given is that, as Macbeth says that a candle signifies life which is brief and fragile, one should cherish life as to live it to its fullest in contrary the fact that although a singular life is insignificant on a universal scale. What matters most is that to fight for life just as the boy in ‘Out, Out −’ is much more precious than to waste it away and to later regret as the persona in ‘Disabled’. Although the two poems revolve around the two characters, the human condition that is present in the characters is to either be stripped from them or to slowly lose meaning. Mortal entity is fragile, one should live life to the maximum. There are many overlapping themes, however, ‘Disabled’ mostly presents the theme of loss as sudden and unexpected by heavily basing the poem on the comparisons between “before” and “after”. On the contrary, ‘Out, Out −’ generally presents the theme of loss as equally unexpected but Frost gives the reader an impression that life is a gift that should be cherished since the boy in ‘Out, Out −’ ended up fighting for his life, and despite being young, he had still been aware that he was going to die.