Mental Cases Essay Grade 7 PDF

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Mental Cases - Wilfred Owen Mental Cases is a WW1 poem written in 1918 by Wilfred Owen as a response to his stay at CraigLockhart Hospital. It describes his encounters with war-torn men suffering from horrific physical injuries as well as devastating psychological pain such as post-traumatic stress disorder. This poem is often compared to “Dulce Decorum Est”, another significant poem written by Owen, as both were written with the purpose of conveying horrors of war by shocking the readers. In this poem, Owen borrows diction from both the Bible and Macbeth. The famous Shakespeare play entails a protagonist who strives greedily for power, which may reflect the political conflict to which these soldiers owe their lives to. In addition, the internal turmoil of Lady Macbeth’s insanity may be implicated as resembling the mental illness the soldiers are left to be plagued by. These are the dark, horrific aspects one brings to mind at the mention of Macbeth, therefore it is unsurprising that Owen borrow’s its diction throughout the poem. By contrast, the sensitive topics in the poem are elevated to the status of the Divine, perhaps portraying the sheer magnitude and lasting effects of war on these men. Finally, Owen also distorts the grammar in the poem in order to illustrate the long lasting and unexpected horrors of war, for these disjointed lines may be utilised to mimic the broken, and illogical cognition the soldiers will be forced to endure for the remainder of their lifetimes. This essay will describe how Owen, firstly, captures the reader’s attention and shock, then proceeds to dehumanise the soldiers into grotesque creatures, and lastly shows their inner psychological turmoil. This poem is structured in three stanzas consisting of nine lines each, with each stanza honing in on different aspects of Wilfred Owen’s response to the patients at CraigLockhart Hospital. In stanza one, he questions the nature of the whole situation and these are immediately answered in the second stanza. In the third stanza, the whole experience and his thoughts are aggressively and angrily summed up. Throughout the poem, Owen uses a trochaic pentameter to present a more aggressive and blunt tone, which may reflect his experience and encounters at the hospital. The rough rhyme scheme of the poem is distorted in the last four lines that take on a sermonistic tone. The distortion of the rhyme scheme is used to accentuate the deteriorating mental state of the soldiers and to mimic a more accusatory tone as Owen is trying to blame the readers for their involvement in the suffering of these soldiers as well. The soldiers are dehumanised right from the title of the poem for the ambiguous noun “Mental Cases” is open to either literal or metaphorical interpretations. On one hand, “Cases” implies the soldiers are simply problems, or weight of dragged problems from the war to be dealt with. On the other, “Cases” likens the soldiers to hollow cases of flesh, without souls or purpose. Wilfred Owen uses his craft as a poet to question the nature of the grim situation. He uses rhetorical questions on the first line, thus, immediately the readers are more engaged and likely to also question the state and origin of the soldier’s injuries. This is evident in the short monosyllabic interrogative “Who are these?”. It is an intense and immersive opening to the poem and foregrounds the shock and gore which is yet to come. Owen uses the pronoun “these” to not only strip away the humanity of the unnamed soldiers, but to also create a

distance between the readers and the wounded men. This emphasises the stark contrast between the reader’s and the soldier’s mental states and as a result, creates more sympathy towards the soldiers. “Why sit they here in twilight?” features a strange use of syntax. This use of the strange syntax disrupts the rhythm of the poem which may reflect the broken mental and physical state of the soldiers. “Twilight” sets an eerie and supernatural tone, likening the soldiers to more of a monstrous being than a human one. The setting of Twilight also connotes a place of indeterminacy, where it is neither light nor dark, which may reflect how these wounded soldiers are trapped in their limbo, unable to escape. Wilfred Owen uses archaic language such as “wherefore”, to add biblical weight, emphasising the dramatic injury in the soldier’s conditions. This biblical theme is continued in the use of “purgatorial shadows” which rock in a metaphorical hellish existence in order to heighten the shock and sympathy felt by the reader. Their “drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish” create a horrifying and grotesque visual imagery which once again shocks the readers. As Owen continues on to the second paragraph, he skillfully shifts the reader’s attention to not what is portrayed, but who is portrayed. The soldiers were once lurking “shadows” or described as outlines in the dark. By contrast, in the second stanza he reveals them as “men”. Perhaps this concrete noun humanises them, but in fact it does the opposite, for they are described as “men whose minds the Dead have ravished”. As evidenced, the capitalisation of “Dead”, instead personifies and elevates the dominance of Death, making it an anthropological entity, here to savage life, thus leaving these “men” hollow and unidentifiable. This theme of dehumanisation continues as Owen makes reference to isolated body parts of the men, but never the entirety of being, therefore stripping them of a holistic identity. This is evident in “fingers”, “hair”, “flesh”, “blood”, “lungs”. This lexical set of body parts highlights not only the injury but also the state of chaos these men’s battered bodies are in. So much so that each limb must be treated in isolation, for there ceases to be a completed man present at all. The repetition of the word “murdered” reinforces the severity of the crimes committed against the soldiers to appeal to the pathos of the readers, this ensures that there is a lasting impression of the horrors of war on these soldier. At the start of stanza three, Owen reiterates the casual relationship between war and insanity with the opening diction “therefore”. This can be a shock to the readers as the distance between the horrific reality of war and the traumatic consequences has been dramatically shortened. Owen also refers to the indeterminacy of day and night, which suggests that the soldiers are living in a twilight world where each new day is compared to “a wound that bleeds afresh” as the soldiers are only able to associate bloodshed and war with “day” - a symbol of hope. “-Thus their hands are picking at each other” demonstrates how the soldiers are spiraling into a weaker and damaged mental state. “Thus” is repeated to mimic the deterioration of the mentality of soldiers as it is abnormal to repeat the same sentence starter twice. This can shock the reader as well as emphasise the detrimental and prevalent consequences of war. Finally, “picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging” has connotations of torture and pain. “Rope-knouts” are old torture tools and can suggest that the soldiers attempt to balance out their mental pain by

inflicting physical pain onto themselves. This is impactful to the readers as it is disturbing and it is more likely to appeal to their pathos. To conclude, Wilfred Owen uses a myriad of techniques such as repetitions, allusions and imagery to shock the readers and emphasise the horrors of war. This angry response towards the realities of war is heightened by Owen’s choice of chilling and biblical diction as well as the ongoing theme of dehumanisation of these war-torn soldiers....