"Insensibility" is a poem written by

Wilfred Owen Wilfred Edward Salter Owen Military Cross, MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His war poetry on the horrors of Trench warfare, trenches and Chemi ...

during the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

which explores the effect of warfare on soldiers, and the long- and short-term psychological effects that it has on them. The poem's title refers to the fact that the soldiers have lost the ability to feel due to the horrors which they faced on the Western Front during the First World War.

Owen and the First World War

During and after the First World War many combatants and former combatants found their lives and minds permanently altered by the violent, loud and traumatic life of trench warfare. This disorder was called "

shell shock Shell shock is a term that originated during World War I to describe symptoms similar to those of combat stress reaction and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which many soldiers suffered during the war. Before PTSD was officially recogni ...

" or "

neurasthenia Neurasthenia ( and () 'weak') is a term that was first used as early as 1829 for a mechanical weakness of the nerves. It became a major diagnosis in North America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries after neurologist Georg ...

". Wilfred Owen was diagnosed with neurasthenia in 1916, within four months of arriving in France, and was briefly invalided home. The "We wise" to whom the poem refers might, as Jon Stallworthy has suggested, be construed as "we poets", to which the Owen scholar Douglas Kerr adds the possibilities "we officers", "we shellshocked neurasthenics" and "we cowards". Kerr describes the relationship of the poem to Owen's neurasthenia as "obvious though complex".

References

2. Poetry Foundation. (n.d.) "Insensibility." Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57258/insensibility 3. Theatre cloud. (2014). Sassoon and Owen: A meeting that changed the course of literature. Retrieved from http://www.theatrecloud.com/news/sassoon-and-owen-a-meeting-that-changed-the-course-of-literature
World War I poems Poetry by Wilfred Owen Poems published posthumously {{1910s-poem-stub

Owen and the First World War

See also

References