The Dead-Beat
"The Dead-Beat" is a poem by Wilfred Owen. It deals with the atrocities of World War I.
Composition
Owen developed the poem while he was a patient at Craiglockhart, a hospital for officers suffering with mental illness.[1] It was here that he met fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon and where his personal psychological healing from the traumas of war. "The Dead-Beat" marked the beginning of his writings as representations of soldiers who could no longer tell their own stories.[2]
In writing the poem, Owen received help from Sassoon, who he elsewhere called one of his dearest friends. Sassoon's influence is apparent particularly in the poem's anger over injustice.[3] Owen described the experience in a letter in which he suggested that the middle sections needed work.[1] The night he met Sassoon, he began writing "The Dead-Beat", as described in the letter: "After leaving him, I wrote something in Sassoon's style... The last thing he said was 'Sweat your guts out writing poetry!' 'Eh?' says I. 'Sweat your guts out, I say!'"[4] Pat Barker, in her novel Regeneration, describes a fictitious workshop between the poets based on this letter.[1]
Analysis
Like many of his poems about the war, Owen explored both courage and cowardice in "The Dead-Beat".[5] He also attempts to emulate the vernacular of a common soldier in a realistic war setting.[3] In particular, "The Dead-Beat" depicts how war can isolate rather than unite individuals who share common causes or experiences.[6]
References
- ^ a b c Joyes, Kaley (2009). "Regenerating Wilfred Owen: Pat Barker's revisions". Mosaic. 42 (3): 169–83. ISSN 0027-1276.
- ^ Hipp, Daniel. The Poetry of Shell Shock: Wartime Trauma and Healing in Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney, and Siegfried Sassoon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005: 54. ISBN 0-7864-2174-6
- ^ a b Cuthbertson, Guy. Wilfred Owen. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014: 204. ISBN 978-0-300-15300-2
- ^ Hipp, Daniel. The Poetry of Shell Shock: Wartime Trauma and Healing in Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney, and Siegfried Sassoon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005: 55. ISBN 0-7864-2174-6
- ^ Cuthbertson, Guy. Wilfred Owen. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014: 217. ISBN 978-0-300-15300-2
- ^ Hipp, Daniel. The Poetry of Shell Shock: Wartime Trauma and Healing in Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney, and Siegfried Sassoon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005: 66. ISBN 0-7864-2174-6
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- "A Terre"
- "Anthem for Doomed Youth"
- "Apologia Pro Poemate Meo"
- "Arms and the Boy"
- "The Dead-Beat"
- "Disabled"
- "Dulce et Decorum est"
- "Futility"
- "Insensibility"
- "Mental Cases"
- "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young"
- "Spring Offensive"
- "Strange Meeting"
- "Wild with All Regrets"
- "1914"
- "Asleep"
- "At a Calvary near the Ancre"
- "Cramped in that Funnelled Hole"
- "Elegy in April and September"
- "The End"
- "Has Your Soul Sipped?"
- "I Saw His Round Mouth's Crimson"
- "The Last Laugh"
- "The Letter"
- "Miners"
- "A New Heaven"
- "The Next War"
- "Soldier's Dream"
- "Sonnet On Seeing a Piece of our Heavy Artillery Brought into Action"
- "To Eros"
- "Training"
- "With an Identity Disc"
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