Disabled (poem)
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Disabled is a poem written by Wilfred Owen, a World War I poet. Disabled is about a man who lost all his limbs in a battle. The poem describes the man's life after the war. It is about how he signed up without thinking and how underappreciated veterans are.
It is not dissimilar to another one of Owen's poems, The Send Off. Owen wrote many poems about the war itself such as Dulce Et Decorum Est, but he also wrote poems like this. Another one was Mental Cases, a poem about what would later be called post-traumatic stress disorder.
In this poem it seemed that Owen wanted to show the world what war did to people. The man in this poem will never be able to play football again, or flirt with women. It is the tale of a man who is essentially dead.
It is also a poem about disablism - the inequality experienced by people 'disabled' by and in modern society. The subject of the poem does not have access to proper services for his needs and is forced to wait to be put to bed at a time when the nurses decide, in an institution that excludes him from mainstream society. He is forced to accept his condition, his impairment, and to accommodate himself to society. Society refuses to adapt itself to his impairment.
