Mental Cases

Mental CasesWilfred OwenMental Cases

CHARACTER In Stanza 1 who is Owen describing?

The poem is narrated by someone who is observing returned soldiers who have been placed in a mental institution.

The subjects of the poem are objectified by the opening references to these and they. Their humanity has been stripped from these unnamed patients and the abruptness of the opening rhetorical question challenges the speaker to think about what caused them to be in this condition.

Their nameless state is symbolic. It makes them representational of those whose mental capacity is shattered by their wartime experiences. What do these men look like? He describes the men as shadows, rocking quietly in a darkened corner during twilight. Their tongues hang from their mouths while saliva dribbles down their faces. Their expression appears tormented and they have deep worry lines etched into their faces. This is a result of sleepless nights and the endless memories of war which haunt them.What language techniques are used to create this image?

METAPHOR / ARCHAIC LANGUAGE

Why sit they here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial Shadows

The narrator is asking (rhetorical question) why these once strong, proud men have been reduced to rocking in a corner like madmen. He compares them to shadows grey, invisible and a poor shell of their former selves. Purgatory also implies that they are stuck in a living hell. Even though they are alive they are tormented by their memories. They have withdrawn into an inner hellish place which overwhelms all else. This image is emphasised through the symbolic use of twilight. This is a time of day which is the transition from day to night and reinforces the situation these men are in caught between life and death / day and night.

The archaic language of Wherefore lends Biblical weight to the moral implications of their condition. These purgatorial shadows rock in a metaphorical hellish existence.

What language techniques are used to create this image?Simile / Word InversionDrooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skulls tongues wicked?

Value-laden diction and word inversion heightens the impact of the repellent image of bared teeth and aggressive manner, The simile links the living with the dead, emphasising their separation from normalcy as well as hinting at how war has made them wicked. Their mannerisms and tortured physical condition causes these men to appear almost as animals. Drooping tongues and slavering jaws conveys their dehumanised appearance. War has stolen their humanity.

What language techniques are used to create this image?Metaphor / PersonificationWhat slow panic gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets? Ever from their hair and through their sweated palms misery swelters

The chasms around the eyes of the soldiers are a result of endless sleepless nights and mental anguish. Misery has also been personified. The almost sweat out the pain they are consumed by.

Comment on the use of personification in Stanza 2. What image is created here?Memory fingers in their hair of murders

The soldiers are so distraught by the memories of people they have killed and of the deaths of their comrade's that they try to physically tear the memories from their head. Their memories are compared to fingers poking and prodding them but which they cant remove.

What is meant by multitudinous murders? Comment on the repetition of murderThe unknown these have been identified as those whose minds have been ravished. The ravisher is death itself, personified and capitalised as the cause of what has happened to these mens minds. Wars Dead have attacked their psyches, making them another casualty of war. They have been robbed of innocent slumbers, now plagued by nightmarish recall.

Owen borrows a Shakespearean phrase (allusion) from Macbeth, to emphasise the mass death these men have been forced to witness. Multitudinous murders is made more ominous by death in war being equated with murders, repeated in lines 2 and 3. The accumulated effect of the harsh alliterative m in the second and third lines makes the reader share the speakers shock at what is before him. This allows them to make the connection between the horrific slaughter they once witnessed and what they have become.Rhyme / InversionBatter of guns and shatter of flying muscles

Rhyming terms Batter and shatter confront the reader as does the image of flying muscles as mens bodies are ripped apart. To emphasise the on-going hell these helpless men endure, word inversion and reference to the senses of sight and sound are used, Always they must see these things and hear them. The horrors they have witnessed have utterly debilitated them; their lifeline to normalcy has been completely severed. They are longer and will never be the men they once were.

Rucked serves as an effective image for the convoluted and war-torn terrain, thick with the dead in which they lived and fought.

STANZA 3: Language TechniquesIn Stanza 3 the soldiers have lost visual contact with the outer world as they focus instead on an inner sight fractured by pain and death.

Eyeballs shrink tormented back into their brains

Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;

Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh

Their heads wear this hilarious, hideous, Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses

Thus their hands are pluckingpickingsnatchingpawing

Personification / AlliterationStill their eyeballs shrink tormented Back into their brains

The mens eyes rolling back in their heads further adding to the image of these men as inhuman and the conveys the mental anguish they cannot escape from. The harsh alliterative b also seems aggressive and reflects Owens anger at what these men have been reduced to. Word inversion is also used here placing emphasis on tormented.

Therefore still tormented their eyeballs shrink backSymbolism & SimileSunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh

Blood imagery is effectively developed through the compound words, blood-smear and blood-black. The impact is increased further by the b alliteration and the negative connotations of smear and black.

Neither Sunlight nor night has any effect on the world these soldiers live. Dawn heralds no rebirth, repair or redemption for them.

Dawn is usually symbolic of a new day, a fresh start.

They exist in a twilight world where each new day merely beckons more of the same, opening like a wound that bleeds afresh. Theirs is a mental wound that festers and weeps and never heals.

Extended MetaphorTheir heads wear this hilarious, hideous, Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses

The extended metaphor of these patients as living corpses, begun in the opening stanza is concluded in the final stanza by their description as set-smiling corpses. The falseness of their appearance emphasises that they have been dehumanised. War has taken away their humanity. They appear almost as animals or the living dead.

Personal Pronoun & VerbsThus their hands are pluckingpickingsnatchingpawing

Their mens frenzied actions, plucking, picking, snatching and pawing (verbs) are easily envisaged. It conveys the desperation of these men and also their mental incapacitation. They are scourged by rope-knouts of societys making that dealt them war and madness. The final four lines have a sermonistic tone as if we are being directly addressed to recognise our culpability in the fates of these men. We recognise our representative involvement through terms such as brother and us.

EMOTIVE LANGUAGE:SquanderTormentedBlood-blackWoundHideousCorpseScourging, snatching, plucking, pawingWarMadness

PurgatorialLeerWickedPainSlow panicMiseryHell, hellishRavishedMurdersCarnage

Theme and PurposeWritten in 1918 Owen captures the damage to mens minds as a result of war. The damage was no more shameful than bodily wounds, however the after effects of war didnt always find ready acceptance at that time.

Owens aim is to shock, to describe in stark detail the ghastly physical symptoms of mental torment. As in DULCE ET DECORUM EST, Owen shows men in their prime become senile wrecks. In this case however it is due to how they have been impacted mentally rather than as a result of physical injury.

Owen also comments on the culpability of the public for the fate of these men. War, which is madness itself, was waged with such men as its cannon fodder and for that we all stand indicted. There is a social responsibility for what has befallen these hellish, these helpless and these things.

LITERATURE RESPONSEPlan and write a response to the following:

Describe an interesting idea in a text(s) you have studied. Explain how techniques have been used to help you understand this idea(s).