"Disabled" is a poem about the effects of war on a person and what it can do mentally and physically. It is also about how friends, or anybody, can affect your decisions and try to make you do things you wouldn't normally. It is also stating that war is not good and that it doesn't help anyone.
The poem starts "He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark, and shivered in his ghastly suit of grey"; this sort of language already puts a thought of depression in our minds because of the shivering, and the "ghastly suit of grey".Shivering is usually a sign of coldness or disease, and a "ghastly suit of grey" is dull, and forgotten. It is about a man who has come home from war with lots of injuries, no legs, and a missing arm. He listens to other people having fun, and he wants to join them, yet he can't because nobody will come close to him because of how he is. He thinks about how he used to have fun before he went to war.
He used to think injuries would make him cool, like having an enormous gouge in his leg after a football match. He went out with his friends to celebrate winning the game and someone said he should join the army.He thought about it, while partially inebriated, and he decided to join up because he thought he would impress people by being "Mr. War Hero". He didn't think about what could happen to him or what he could do to himself.
Soon enough he was drafted and he went off to war with cheers and good spirit, "Espirit de corps". When he got back there were some people to welcome him home and some just didn't care much Some thanked him for what he had done. It says "All of them touch him like some queer disease". People generally try to avoid diseases, just like they try to avoid him.The use of the word "disease" makes us think how bad off he must be and how nobody will even come talk to him, because they are afraid of "catching" him like they would a disease.
Now that he has a large assortment of injuries nobody pays attention to him but a few. There was an artist who liked to paint pictures of his face. He had lost colour from his face. He had lost lots of blood from his injuries when he was in the trenches, and he hadn't gotten a transplant so he was very pale.
The language used about "lost his colour very far from here" makes him sound very pale, very old, rotten, and ugly, Like a vampire who needs some blood.After the war he was out into a few institutes for a few years. He will follow the rules and try to have a half-decent rest of his life. He will take any pity he can get even though it won't make him feel any better. He will look at women, but they will turn their faces to the strong men with no injuries or missing body parts. The last lines of the poem are "How cold and late it is! Why don't they come and put him into bed? Why don't they come? " This sort of language makes you think of how depressed and bored he must be.
Not able to do anything for himself, but requiring other people to even put him to bed. This poem is saying that war is not all it is cracked up to be. Everywhere you go you will find war propaganda, saying "Join now, be a hero! " or something of the sort. Things like that glorify war and make it sound like a game.
This poem points out that all of those things are not true, war is not a game, and you will not become a hero from it, you will either survive and be forgotten or die. War does not help anyone; it only causes destruction and sadness. Nothing good can come of it.
