Hi there.

Mr. Barnsley here.

Thank you for joining me today.

In today's lesson, we're gonna be looking at "Disabled," a poem by Wilfred Owen, in more detail.

This is a poem from the Eduqas anthology, so you're gonna need to make sure you have a copy of the anthology in front of you.

I'm also gonna be assuming that you've looked at this poem before, you've read it once through, you understand what it's about, because we are gonna be diving deeper in today's lesson with our analysis.

All right, let's get started.

Right, let's have a look at today's outcome then, shall we? So we're gonna be analysing how Owen presents ideas of war and isolation in his poem "Disabled." So five keywords we're gonna look out for today.

The first is juxtaposition.

This is where two things are being seen or placed close together, but actually they are contrasting.

So two quite different things.

Vitality is the state of being strong and active.

It's having lots of energy.

If something is ghastly, it resembles a ghost, especially being like very pale.

Flippant, this is something that's kind of not showing as serious, it doesn't have maybe not a particularly respectful attitude.

And caesura is a kind of structural technique.

It's a pause that occurs within a line of poetry.

It's usually marked by some form of punctuation.

So let's keep an eye out for these in our lesson, they will be in bold, but also see if we can use them in our own discussion.

So, two learning cycles in today's lesson.

We're going to start by focusing on these ideas of isolation and emptiness.

And then we're gonna kind of zoom out and think about how Wilfred Owen is portraying war.

So let's start by thinking of ideas of isolation and emptiness.

So I want to start by drawing your attention to two quotations.

One is about the soldier's pre-war memories 'cause actually, in the middle of this poem, we kind of almost have a flashback and the soldier remembering what life was like before war.

And he says, "About this time Town used to swing so gay / When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees." And in this context, "gay" means happy.

We also see a quote from the soldier's post-war reality, and this is it says, "Now he is old; his back will never brace / He's lost his colour very far from here." Now, I want you to think about what do these quotations reveal about the soldier's pre- and post-war experiences? If you have a partner, you can discuss this question with them.

If you're working by yourself, you can just think through this independently.

All right, pause the video, have a think, and press play when you've got some ideas.

Welcome back.

I wonder what you were saying there.

I think there's some quite interesting comparisons we can make between those two quotes.

Izzy, one of our Oak pupils, said, "I think Owen is creating a juxtaposition," okay, so putting two things that are very contrasting next to each other, "between the soldier's pre- and post-war experience.

The words 'swing' and 'gay' create a sense of vitality, energy, and strength around the soldier's pre-war experience, while the words 'old' and 'lost' suggest that the soldier now feels a sense of emptiness in the aftermath of war." Okay, that's really interesting there, and I think it's really important that we remember that this war spanned four years, 1914 to 1918.

So even if this soldier had been fighting for the full time, so let's say they enlisted in 1914 and they returned at the end of the war, that's four years.

Yes, you are older after four years, but are you old? You know, if you go to a war full of vitality as a young man, should you be returning old? Things for you to think about.

Why don't you think about whether you agreed with Izzy? Okay, think about the discussions you were having, the thoughts you were having.

Do you agree with Izzy? Why or why not? If there's any of Izzy's ideas that you like, you may wish to make a note of them as well.

So pause the video, take a moment to reflect, and press play when you're ready to continue.

Okay, true or false then? Owen suggests that the soldier was unhappy before enlisting to fight in the war.

Is that true or false? Pause the video and have a think, and press play when you've got an idea.

Yes, that was false.

Why is it false? The words "gay," the verb "swing," they all suggest that the soldier felt this kind of happiness and this vitality before the war, something that was so clearly lacking when they returned.

Let's consider a couple more quotations then, shall we? "In his ghastly suit of grey," so almost ghostly, "He's lost his colour." How do these quotations signify ideas of emptiness? All right, if you've got a partner, you can discuss with them.

If you are working by yourself, you can think through this independently.

But pause the video and give yourself some time to think about this question.

Press play when you've got some ideas.

Right, welcome back.

I really love it when we are looking at layers of meaning in individual words.

Let's think about some of the things you might have pulled out from these quotations.

So, you might have talked about that adjective "ghastly," one of our keywords.

We talked about connotations of ghosts, therefore connotations of death.

We know the soldier is still alive, but it's almost like he feels closer to death than to life.

"Grey" has this connotation of nothingness, and really interesting, well done if you picked out the contrast here, the juxtaposition of kind of colour and greyness and actually, he's "lost his colour" here.

Colour represents vitality, it represents brightness, it represents energy and youth, and he's lost all of this, and now he sits in this place of grey.

It's kind of the opposite of this joyful life full of vitality he once had.

I wonder if you said any of those things.

Of course, you might have had other ideas as well, and that's okay as long as they kind of really are logical when you look at the quotes that you can see on the screen.

True or false, then? Owen implies that the soldier feels empty in the aftermath of the war.

Is that true or false? Pause the video, have a think, and press play when you are done.

Yes, well done.

That is true.

Well done if you got that right.

Why is that true? Well, we can zoom in on words like "ghastly" or "grey" really create this image of someone who feels empty, devoid of life, closer to death than they are closer to life, even though we know they are still alive.

Now, you may have noticed Owen utilises caesura, and this is a technique.

We spoke about it at the beginning.

It's one of our keywords, okay? It's a pause that occurs within a line of poetry, and it's usually marked by some form of punctuation.

We could actually represent it like this.

So if those lines represent the poem and those circles represent full stops, it really create this pause right in the middle of a sentence.

We might be quite used to kind of poetry flowing across lines, whereas a caesura puts a very kind of marked stop in the middle of a sentence.

Let's think about why Owens might have done that.

How could we link these caesura to this idea of isolation, this idea of isolation? Let's try and think about how they could symbolise isolation, represent isolation.

You might want to look at that image that you can see on the screen and see if that helps you with your discussions.

So if you have a partner, please do discuss with them.

Otherwise, just think through this independently.

Pause your video, have a think, and press play when you're ready to continue.

Welcome back.

I always find it's challenging to talk about structural techniques, but I'm always super, super impressed when pupils can kind of take a structural technique and say, "Okay, what is the writer trying to do? Why are they using this? How is it making me feel? What could it represent?" So really well done if you came up with some great ideas there.

Laura, one of our Oak pupils, has got an example.

Let's compare our thoughts to hers.

She said, "Maybe the caesura represent how the soldier feels separated and cut off from other people.

They could represent how they feel as if there is a physical barrier between him and other people." So that caesura represents a barrier between kind of one line and another, and it could represent a barrier between the soldier and others.

I love that idea.

What do you think? Did you agree with Laura? Do you like Laura's idea? Did you have different ideas? Why? Why not? Okay, pause the video, take a moment to reflect on your own thoughts and discussions, and if you like any of Laura's ideas and you hadn't thought of them, now's the time to note them down.

All right, press play when you're ready to continue.

Okay, let's check then.

Which of the following might the use of caesura represent in Owen's "Disabled"? Could they represent the continuation of war, A? Could they represent how the soldier feels cut off from others, B? Or could they represent the soldier's pre-war vitality, C? A, B, or C? Pause the video, make your choice, and press play when you're ready to find out the answer.

Yes, welcome back, and well done if you said B.

I think that's the only logical inference we can make there.

Of course, you might make other inferences, but I don't think the other two are logical.

Certainly not the first, okay? This is a hard stop, so it doesn't make sense that a hard stop should represent a continuation.

I think C you could argue, but it would need expanding further, like almost you could potentially argue that the caesura kind of represents the war and how it changed him from the pre-war vitality to the kind of post-war isolation.

So I think there is an idea in there, I just don't think it's explained fully or clearly enough that we could say it's the right answer here.

B, very clearly, is a really nice clear inference about what the caesura could represent, so well done if you said B.

All right, on to our first task, and we're gonna kind of start to get some of these ideas that we've discussed down on paper, and we're gonna do this in the form of a plan.

So we're gonna be using a single paragraph outline.

A single paragraph outline is one of my favourite ways of planning paragraphs, individual paragraphs, or we can expand these if we're writing essays to multi-paragraph outlines.

But today, we're only just focusing on writing kind of one short bit of, short paragraph, short response today, to answer the question, how does Owen present ideas of isolation and emptiness in "Disabled"? So, a single paragraph outline looks like this.

It's split into three sections.

The first is our topic sentence.

This is a full sentence.

We'll always write that in full.

This is explaining our argument, explaining the focus of the paragraph.

Our supporting details is where we collect in note form all of the kind of the words, the phrases, the methods, the language techniques that we want to zoom in.

And we need to make sure anything we put in this box supports our topic sentence, okay? We need to be picking really relevant evidence that kind of supports the argument we're trying to make.

Our concluding sentence should also be written in a full sentence, and this is where we summarise the focus of the paragraph, but we really focus on the writer's intentions here.

So, if we haven't already mentioned what Owen is trying to do or his message or how he's trying to make us feel, we do it in our concluding sentence.

All right, pause the video then.

I want you to bring together everything that we have learnt so far, we've discussed so far, about isolation and emptiness, and let's put it in a plan.

All right, pause the video, give this a go, and press play when you're ready to continue.

All right, welcome back.

How did you find that? On the screen, you can see one of our Oak pupils Andeep's plan, and we can use it as a model.

I think it's a really good example.

You can compare yours to it.

You can see if you like any of Andeep's ideas, or you can see if you disagree with it.

All right, so Andeep's topic sentence, he wrote, "Arguably, Owen's 'Disabled' represents how soldiers felt isolated and empty after war." Some of the details that he wants to use.

He wanted to compare that juxtaposition between verbs like "swing" and that adjective "old," really juxtaposes the pre-war vitality and the post-war emptiness.

Adjectives like "ghastly" and "grey" suggest the soldier is now devoid of life, devoid of colour.

And he also wants to talk about the use of caesura and how these represent how the soldier feels cut off from those around him.

That concluding sentence now where we're gonna summarise our arguments and focus on Owen's kind of message, Owen's purpose.

He says, "Potentially, Owen's 'Disabled' reveals the difficulty soldiers faced in adjusting to life after war, especially when dealing with injuries that made it harder to reconnect to their former lives." I think this is a really great example.

There are some brilliant ideas in here, so I'm gonna suggest you pause the video, compare your plan to Andeep's, and if you want, you can use some of his to improve your plan further.

All right, pause the video, take a moment to reflect, and press play when you're ready to continue.

Okay, welcome back.

We're gonna move now onto our second learning cycle where we're gonna analyse the portrayal of war.

So arguably, we can see a criticism of war throughout all of Owen's poetry, and we can see this in "Disabled." Specifically, we know that Owen's poetry is often interpreted as showing the futility of war.

A reminder that futility means it has no effect, it achieves nothing.

Okay, so the final line of the poem, "How cold and late it is! Why don't they come / And put him into bed? Why don't they come?" Let's think about how might that repetition of "why" and the repeated question marks, how does that relate to this idea of futility, of kind of pointlessness of war? What do you think? Why don't you pause the video and kind of throw some ideas around.

If you have a partner, you can share it with them.

Otherwise, you can just think through this independently.

All right, pause the video, have a think, and press play when you've got some ideas.

Right, welcome back.

I'm sure you had plenty of ideas here.

You might be able to see some of them on the screen now.

That repetition of "why" really does question the nature of war, doesn't it? It really questions the sacrifice that these young men were making.

And by ending on a question mark, by ending on this question, it really invites us as the reader to question the purpose of war, question the impact it has, okay? So, I think we can definitely argue that Owen is encouraging us as a reader to question war, to not blindly accept that we should, you know, support war and agree to war and sign up to war.

He's really asking us to question, like, is war worth it? Okay, which interpretation then of the question marks do you feel is most relevant to the portrayal of war? Is it A, the question marks suggests that Owen doesn't know how to portray the war or he's not sure how he feels about it? Or is it B, the question marks could signify Owen questioning the purpose of the war and the soldier's sacrifice? A or B? Pause the video, have a think, and press play when you've got some ideas.

Well done if you said B.

That definitely feels like the most logical.

Why? Well, we know that Owen's poetry is known for portraying the horrors and futility of war.

We know how Owen feels about war.

He certainly is questioning its significance and questioning whether it is futile.

All right, let's look at a couple more phrases then.

"Before he threw away his knees." "Poured it down the shell-holes." This actually, this language feels quite flippant.

It doesn't feel like he's taking it seriously, particularly when we think about the content.

This is about him losing his legs, okay? But it's, he just threw them away.

The blood was poured away.

What do think the significance of this flippant language might be in terms of Owen's portrayal of war? Why, you know, when we know he talks about the brutality and the seriousness of war, why is he talking in such flippant way? What do you think? Pause the video, have a think, have a discussion with your partner, or just think through this independently and press play when you've got some ideas.

Welcome back.

Really interesting thing to think about there, isn't it? It seems to be another juxtaposition, the flippant language with the severity, the seriousness of the brutality of the situation.

Sam said that she thinks "the flippant language, particularly around the soldier's injuries, further, like, highlight how these injuries were for nothing.

His sacrifice was pointless." So, Sam's arguing that this further supports the idea that war is futile.

What do you think? Do you agree with Sam's ideas? If there's anything that you like about Sam's response there and you want to add to your own, now's the time to note it down.

All right, pause the video, reflect on your own discussions and thoughts, and press play when you're ready to continue.

Okay, true or false then? We might interpret Owen's "Disabled" as suggesting that the soldier's sacrifice was for nothing.

Is that true? Is that false? Pause the video, have a think, and press play when you've got an answer.

Yes, I think we can say that is true.

Why? Well, we could argue that the flippant language, such as "threw away" and "poured" in relation to the soldier's injuries, suggest this sense of pointlessness.

Okay, on to our final task of today's lesson.

In the first lesson, you planned a paragraph.

Now we're gonna write a paragraph.

So I've kind of created the plan for you, a single paragraph outline for you.

We're answering a slightly different question now.

How does Owen portray the war in "Disabled"? So our topic sentence: Arguably, Owen's "Disabled" presents the futility of war, so we're focusing on war being futile.

What supporting details do I want us to use? Well, I want us to think about the repetition of "why," the question marks, and how these could signify that Owen is questioning the nature of war.

I want to talk about how it ends on a question mark, inviting us as the reader to question war as well.

And I want us to focus on some of this flippant language suggesting that war and the soldier's injuries are all for nothing.

My concluding sentence, and you can copy this word for word in your paragraph: Potentially, we might read Owen's poetry as inviting the reader to question the nature of war and whether it's worth the sacrifices that soldiers make for it.

Okay, so you are gonna take this plan, and you are now gonna turn it into a developed paragraph.

We've got so many great ideas, I'm hoping you're feeling really confident about turning this into a piece of great writing.

Pause the video, best of luck, and press play when you think you're done.

Okay, welcome back.

How did you find that? Well done to everyone who checked their spelling, punctuation, and grammar as well before they put their pen down.

We should always be doing that when we are writing.

Okay, we're gonna finish then with a moment of reflection, and we're going to do that by comparing our paragraphs to the work of one of our Oak pupils, Sofia.

Okay, we're gonna think about what we like about Sofia's, if there's anything we want to use to enhance and improve our own work.

And of course, you might not agree with everything that Sofia had written on the page, and that's absolutely fine as well.

So, Sofia wrote that: Arguably, Owen's "Disabled" presents the futility of war.

The repeated use of the word "why" could signify how Owen is questioning the nature of war through his poetry.

Furthermore, to end the poem on a question mark could be seen as an invitation to the reader to question the nature of war as well.

Moreover, the use of flippant language, particularly in relation to the soldier's injuries, could represent how the soldier's sacrifice and injuries were all for nothing.

Potentially, we might read Owen's poetry as inviting the reader to question the nature of war and whether it's worth the sacrifices that the soldiers make for it.

Okay, pause the video, compare your paragraph to Sofia's, and if you want to make any improvements, now's the time to do so.

Okay, that is it.

We have reached the end of today's lesson.

You've done a fantastic job analysing Owen's poem in more detail.

In today's lesson, we have looked at the language of "ghastly" and "grey" and thinking how it suggests that the soldier is now devoid of life.

We also talked about how Owen chooses to end with questions, and this could signify Owen's questioning of war in general and also inviting us to question kind of the futility of war.

We could talk about how Owen uses juxtaposition and particularly the juxtaposition of the soldier's pre-war vitality and the post-war isolation and emptiness to really highlight just how negative the impact has been on these soldiers.

We also talked about the use of caesura within the poem and how this could emphasise how the soldier feels cut off from society now he's returned from war.

We looked at the flippant use of language here and actually how this could further suggest that the war has all been for nothing.

All right, you've done some fantastic work today.

I hope you're really proud of the writing that you have done.

I hope to see you again in one of our lessons in the future.

All right, I'm gonna say bye-bye for now and see you all soon.