Compare the Ways in Which Owen and Frost Present Youth in ‘Disabled’ and ‘Out, Out-’
Compare the ways in which Owen and Frost present youth in ‘disabled’ and ‘Out, out-’ When comparing the poems “Out,Out-” and Disabled many themes appear, the most prominent being youth. Youth is the period between childhood and adulthood in which one grows and develops; it is also a time of hope and optimistic idealism. Not only is youth a physical state of being but a mental state of mind too . Youth is a formative period in a person’s life that is only a short part of one’s existence. Youth as well as life is established in the title of the poem “Out ,Out-” as youth is as fragile as the flame of a candle, all it takes is a small gust of wind and the flame subsides and dies. In both of the poems the protagonists have had their youth and potential taken away. In one of the cases the young boy has an untimely death yet in the other the principal character has to ‘spend a few sick years in institutes’ until his death comes. In the first stanza of Disabled the protagonist seems like a bitter elderly man as ‘voices of play and pleasures after day’ sadden him and almost anger him as he resents the youth and their freedom. By the third line of disabled the reader is bluntly informed of the situation, the protagonist is ‘legless, sewn short at elbow’, this statement is very matter of fact and the age of the boy makes the situation even more calamitous. The boy is described as a youth who enjoys going out with his companions and meeting girls at night when ‘the town used to swing so gay’, this was until he ‘threw away his knees’ and the girls now look at him as if he is ‘some queer disease’. One of the reasons the boy joined the army to go to war was ‘to please his Meg’, this shows the immature nature of the boy as he will risk his life to impress a girl, it is also ironic because by doing so he will ‘never feel again how slim/ Girl’s waists are, or how warm the subtle hands’ as after his accident girls eyes ‘pass from him to the men that were whole. ‘War has aged