Disturbing lack of common sense - Citizen Khan

Recently a lot of folks I know have been complaining about the BBC comedy, Citizen Khan. For those of you who don’t know, Citizen Khan is a ‘comedy set in Birmingham following the trials and tribulations of Mr Khan and his family’. Essentially like Eastenders for Asians, but funny.

The main complaint? They make fun of Pakistani/Asian culture, which is ‘racist’, and they treat religion lightheartedly – Because NO Muslim would ever have the laissez-faire attitude towards their religion that this comedy describes. And that’s fine, you’re all welcome to your opinion, I’m not asking you to conform to mine and enjoy the show. My main problem is firstly, the amount of butt-hurt comments the BBC is receiving over the ‘inappropriateness’ of the show, secondly when people decide to shove their opinion down my throat and thirdly, the hypocrisy of it all.

Allow me to explain. This show that you’re all taking offence over? It’s a SATIRE. A light hearted comedy for people to laugh at. It’s SUPPOSED to be ridiculous and over the top and poke fun at cultural differences. But it isn’t racist, and I’ll tell you why. There is absolutely nothing in that show that isn’t already true, and if you think there is, you’re just lying to yourself. I’m not saying every single person has every single ‘flaw’ (for lack of a better word) that the Khan family portrays, not at all. But each of us will identify with at least some aspect of it. My mum for example loves a good bargain! And so what? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Yes we do tease her for it sometimes, but it’s a cultural stereotype isn’t it, and that’s what this show is full of, stereotypes!

‘But that’s not what we’re like, people will get a bad impression of us’. The multiculturalism of Britain means that everyone will have known/knows/will know at least one Asian person in their lifetime - you are seriously insulting their intelligence if you think that anyone will watch this show and automatically assume that all Asians are exactly like that. You watch Eastenders, do you assume that all your Caucasian friends own a pub and run down the road screaming ‘RICKYYYYYYY’ in a chavvy accent? I thought not.

And the fact of the matter is, there are many Muslims who take the back seat when it comes to religion. I’m not saying it’s you, but it might be someone you know. Because people like that do exist, and the show has chosen to highlight the fact that these people exist. You cannot be upset by their portrayal of real people surely? Because not every Muslim follows the Quran and Hadith 100%. Yes, many of them do their best, and that is very admirable. But there are also just as many that don’t bother, and that is their choice entirely. One show’s portrayal of those people will not mean that your sense of religion is questioned, by any means. You may know Christians or Jews that don’t really follow their religion at all, but does that mean you’ll judge every Christian or Jew by the precedent that the non-religious people set? No. If it really bothers you that much, improve your own life and religion before you complain about others. You cannot point your finger and say ‘its people like that who make all the rest of us look bad’. Really? So it wasn’t you I saw attempting to run your mother in law over? (Yes, that was an exaggerated example, lighten up)

Again, I am NOT saying that everyone is like this, I’m just giving a few examples of people that I have heard complain about this topic, when I know for a fact that they behave in a very similar way themselves. But they’re not famous or on TV so no one will judge them and apparently they think it’s ok to be hypocritical. The real fact of the matter is, this show has hit too close to home for some people and so they’re lashing out. If you were truly nothing like what’s portrayed in the show and happy with your own take on religion, you wouldn’t care about this show at all - you might even enjoy the laughs.

Then there are the people who think their kids will be negatively influenced by this. Firstly, parents tend to grossly underestimate their kids’ intelligence. Honestly, your child CAN understand the difference between a satirical comedy show and real life, sometimes better than the parents. They are more influenced by their home environment than what they see on TV, because they know that it’s not real life. Your blind panic about this affecting your children is sometimes quite obviously your parental insecurity, over the shortcomings of their upbringing. If you are confident that you gave your children the right religious and cultural upbringing, you would have no problem in letting them watch the show because you’d be assured that your children will know that what they see on the TV isn’t the same as what they’ve been taught by you.

So chill out, take a step back and just enjoy the (cheap) laughs the show provides. If it’s really not your thing, don’t watch it, there are many other things on too. But why increase your stress levels worrying about something that truly isn’t the end of the world? No one is asking you to watch and if you don’t watch, you don’t have any complaints J

And please note that this is all my own opinion, I’m not asking you to agree with everything I’ve written. If you identify yourself with any of the people I’ve written about though, please do give thought to what I’ve said. You’re more than welcome to share your own opinion with me and I respect that. At the end of the day, these are all our own thoughts, and none of them are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ – it’s all about how we as individuals perceive things J

Coasting into a Decent Grade

Introduction

  As part of Management Enquiry, undergraduates were split into groups to deliver a presentation, based on a management topic of their choosing. This had to be referenced with a film of similar subject matter, from which examples and parallels could be drawn.

  The aim of this paper is to reflect upon said presentation, using academic theory to address key issues arising from such a project, and noting the points at which personal experience differs from the literature.

Ø  Team Role Theory

Belbin (1981) suggested eight group roles [See Table I], focal to any team;

    While the sentiment behind this theory may have been to combine a mix of strengths, allowing the team to bring together their work, in practice, it is far more difficult to successfully define the exact roles that individuals are suited to. A variety of such roles also requires a consequent variety in personalities, which isn’t always advantageous, as this particular group realised during the introductory seminar. One member hadn’t turned up and the rest couldn’t agree on a topic for the project, mainly due to the group deciding to base their research topic upon a film, as opposed to choosing a relevant film to use as an extended example of their research topic. Their taste in movies being dissimilar, it was almost impossible to choose a film, and therefore the research topic was also not chosen until a much later stage.

- Prevention of similar occurrences in the future

    Firstly, it would have been easier to select a research topic before deciding which film to include in the presentation. This shows an absence of methodical thinking and a lack of understanding of the task. The best way to prevent this would have been to thoroughly read the study guide, and further question the seminar leader to ensure a sound understanding. Hesitance to do so inevitably led to insubstantial knowledge in terms of how to begin approaching the project, as was clear from the backwards approach the team members took.

    Further, rather than fitting together, the different personalities clashed – each individual wanted to base the project on a different film and did not want to concede to other members. An example of a democratic approach to this situation would have been for each member to write down their choice and pick one out of a hat. This way, a film would have been chosen immediately and no team member could plead injustice. 

Ø  Leadership

    The first role that Belbin has listed is that of ‘Chairman’. Probably the most high-profile role, this position should be filled by a confident, charismatic individual with the ability to command the rest of the team. With this group, there was no leadership structure, and therefore no delegation. In an ideal world, we might have said that the members were simply too nice to put themselves above the rest. In reality however, it was most likely that they were too lazy to take on the extra responsibility. As a result, action points were agreed to, although hardly any were implemented. There had been no arrangements to monitor progress and so, no progress was made. Week upon week, everybody was assured by everybody else that the work would be done ‘soon’ – but nobody asked the burning question ‘how soon?’

    Handy notes in  his book, Understanding Organizations [1976, pg.159], that ‘teams whose players saw themselves as all about equally influential were less satisfied and made less profits than teams whose players agreed that some particular individuals were a good deal more influential than others.’ This supports Belbin’s theory that a team requires a focal personality, a leader, to be effectual.

- Prevention of similar occurrences in the future

    In such a situation, one person should have nominated themselves as leader. Although this involves further responsibility, effective leadership would have ensured that the individuals would complete their responsibilities, if only for fear of being ostracised by the rest of the group, who would accuse the person of holding them back.

Ø  Communication

While Belbin has included a Resource Investigator role for external communication, it seems he took good internal communication as a given. The strength of any team can be assessed through their communication. Constant, comprehensive communication indicates strong teams, while sporadic and inadequate communication indicates weak teams.

    While the group had many electronic resources, they barely made use of them. In this day and age, ‘virtual teams’ exist, whereby all group work is done via electronic communication. Even with such benefits, the group did the bare minimum – texting each other only two days before the deadline set, and using email to pass the presentation back and forth between team members for each individual to add their share of the work.

- Prevention of similar occurrences in the future

    With projects of this nature, it seems face to face meetings may be more effective than virtual communication. Perhaps because during a meeting, it is easier to ask questions, ask for further explanation, and become comfortable with team members. Relying solely on virtual communication detracts from establishing a connection with others, which could potentially aid in realising like-minded goals and working towards them, rather than a few members doing all the work, while others ‘coast’ on their efforts.

Conclusion and Self Reflection

Although we pulled together the presentation on the morning it was due, there were steps I personally could have taken into ensuring that the team worked well together and got the work done ahead of time. This includes stepping up as delegator, being firm with other members in terms of deadlines and making attempts at better communication. Perhaps if I had done this in the first instance, our group and presentation may have been much more successful. In the future however, I fully intend to be more organised and authorative, especially with ‘coasting’ group members.

References

1. Belbin, R.M., 1981, Management Teams – Why They Succeed or Fail, Heinemann.

2. Handy, C, 1976, Understanding Organizations, Penguin, 4^th Edition.

Phantom

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

A sure way to bring about -

This ruin, is one word

By leaders;

War.

Armies march, ever closer, higher

I gaze with staring eyes

Cities blazing, in the fire;

The armies fall, the lustre dies.

Rearing flames tell me true,

Where are those men marching to?

Homes of their brothers, theirs too

Is that justifiable to you?

Then once again the glow returns;

Down the red-hot valley blow

Again the phantom city burns;

Again the phantom armies go!

Reality

‘Owen’s intent is to confront the reader with as much reality as he is able to create’ - How Owen achieves his purpose

Owen used poetry as a means of communicating the realities of trench warfare to the masses, contrasting the propaganda of the time.  Through Owen’s use of visceral imagery, sensory language, personas and various rhetorical and literary devices, he is able to confront the reader with a variety of realities related to the war. This is also done by his naming the poems in a particular way.

By using ellipses in his poetry, Owen allows the reader to continue imagining the different forms of realities he talks about and to develop their own responses to them. In ‘Exposure’ for example; “The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow…”; the ellipses add a sense of foreboding and creating a pause so the reader can reflect upon the how the soldiers must have felt at the start of each day; and; "Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent..."; Usually silence is a beautiful tranquil state of mind. Yet, here it is something that creates "nervous" and "curious" soldiers. This truly creates pathos for the soldiers- do they ever have a chance to relax?  This technique is also used in other poems, such as ‘Disabled’; “He thought he’d better join. He wonders why...” This line causes the reader to reflect on what is being said and they begin to think of reasons why soldiers would sign up, which is the effect Owen wanted to create, putting the readers in the position of the soldiers.

The title of ‘Exposure’ indicates that Owen will be ‘exposing’ the truth to us and that there is no form of physical protection for the soldiers, they are ‘exposed’. It also introduces a sense of nakedness and vulnerability. This implied agenda lets the reader know what to expect from the content of the poem. All of his poems are named in order to convey the reality of war to those reading them. For example, ‘Insensibility’ is rightly named to describe the feelings or indeed lack of, that the soldiers have to deal with while fighting in the war. ‘Mental Cases’ and ‘Disabled’ are further examples where Owen tells the reader of the harsh realities; the ones no one at the time would have talked about; that he will go on to talk about in his poems.

‘Exposure’ is a war poem, written from a soldier’s point of view. From the first line, personification is used effectively to introduce us to the harsh weather conditions the soldiers faced “merciless iced east winds”; as such the feeling is created that everyone and everything is against them. This is continued throughout the poem, becoming pathetic fallacy as “the rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy” reflects the seemingly hopeless nature of their situation. “the wind’s nonchalance” is another implication of uncaring austerity from nature. The unceasing actuality of war and the harsh weather conditions is repeatedly referred to through phrases such as “successive” “incessantly” “war lasts” and “pause and renew” . This idea of never-ending hardship contrasts the shortness of the soldier’s lives, made evident by allusions to “dying”. Owen appeals to humanity and makes the shortness of the soldiers’ lives more poignant as we are reminded that they are people, like us, who “lie out here; therefore were born” and are not unfeeling killing machines. The use of pathetic fallacy and personification is also present in poems such as ‘Miners’, ‘Futility’ and ‘The Last Laugh’. Owen uses pathetic fallacy to recreate the harsh elemental conditions of war and reflect the mood of the soldiers. Personification is used to address the reality of a crisis of faith in most of the soldiers and to expose to the reader the inner turmoil most of them had to face during the war.

“Our brains ache” helps us imagine what it felt like for the men; a reassuring sense of solidarity is conveyed by “our”. The cold, noise, exhaustion or feeling generally overwhelmed that could have caused the soldier’s brains to “ache” means the line conveys more of the harsh reality of war than the patriotic image “our” may have. This links with feelings of disorientation later in the poem when they “drowse, sun-dozed” and dissociate themselves from “a dull rumour of some other war” as it all gets too much for the soldiers.

Owen builds tension throughout the poem, using interrogatives “What are we doing here?” and “Is it that we are dying?” so the reader considers the poem more deeply and searches for an answer. He has opted to use repetition to reinforce the feeling of anticipation. The more we are told that “nothing happens” the more we expect something to occur. This mirrors the soldiers’ feelings as they anticipate going over the top.

We are brought back to Owen’s aim (“Exposure”) to convey the reality of war when “The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow…”. The light revealing reality in the same way Owen is ‘exposing’ the truth. “Misery of dawn” is a very effective oxymoron, as it inverts our expectation of dawn being a new start, bringing hope. Owen continues to describe the effects of war on men “All their eyes are ice”, showing the truth of the emotional turmoil the soldiers went through as well as earlier references to the physical hazards “men among its brambles”. We empathise further as it has now been illustrated how like us the soldiers were and how much they suffered.

In the poem ‘Insensibility’, Owen uses an inverted sentence structure along with biblical references as well as using Horace’s poetry, using it ironically to portray his differing viewpoint on the war. “Happy the lad whose mind was never trained”. It is clear that Owen believes that the ‘lads’ who have never been mentally trained are better off than the older soldiers perhaps because their natural instincts are to shut down and stop feeling. Using ‘lad’ makes the reader think of a young boy at war rather than a fit older soldier. This plays on the reader’s sympathies as it reminds them that many of the soldiers are only young boys. He also does this in ‘Arms and the Boy’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ where he describes the soldiers as children. This conveys the reality that many young boys lied about their ages and snuck into the armed forces hoping for glory and victory.

The Bloody Chamber - Recreative w/ Analysis

This is my own recreative writing, based on Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, and below, an analysis of my own work.

I fumbled for the matches in my pocket; what a dim, lugubrious light they gave! And yet, enough, oh, more than enough to see a room designed for desecration and some dark night of unimaginable lovers whose embraces were annihilation.

Perhaps this was the result of near comatose exhaustion; a delirious state of half-sleep in which ludicrous scenes draped over my eyes, each a little more preposterous than the other. Nay, my husband had gone to deal with monetary matters that allowed me to recline so comfortably upon the cushion of his wealth. He shall return imminently, bringing with him an atmosphere of apprehension; compelling my slim, lithe form to hold taut; the atmosphere which had all but disappeared after his departure.

Having seen the first ever mistress of this mansion during her performance of Isolde; that opulently draped diva, trepidation had tingled to my toes, knowing that I may never compare to such a grace. But what an euphoric feeling it had been, being held in the same light as so fine a woman, in the same light as all these women; knowing that to the Marquis, I was as coveted a treasure as any of them.  It may simply have been to feed his fiendish desire to watch, while his vulnerable lady; attractive for her form or indeed in my own case, innocence; lay writhing on a bed of stone. He had surprised me with many a treat. A box of the finest marrons glacés, a bouquet of hot-house flowers or even his frequently desired, solitary lily.

Raising my shy gaze heaven-ward, my eyes made out large, bulky shapes of yet another set of gargoyles through the dim light, backs arched as though waiting for me to make my escape. Their stiff, solid posture and smooth, glossy marble texture causing an involuntary shiver down my spine, not unrelated to the bitter blue breeze penetrating in through some fissure in the walls.

I was alone, standing in an unknown place where nothing made sense, save for my grey mind and its newly accumulated thoughts; the mad ravings of a mousey pianist.

The walls of this stark torture chamber were the naked rock; they gleamed as if they were sweating with fright.

-

Analysis of my writing;

The writings of Angela Carter are unique, in the way of style, themes, symbols and motifs. The stories written by Carter are not those of cheerfulness and happy endings, they are different in a most spectacular way. Carter's rewritten fairy tales are a frightening look at the true reality of what fairy tales really are.

I have chosen this story as it is a familiar fairy tale story, combined with the unfamiliarity of a young girl going to her marital home. I have used this particular gap in the narrative as it is in this moment that the lead character is about to discover her husband’s deep dark secret. This gap made it possible to explore her anxiety of realising that she does not know the man she has married, her reluctance to accept the truth, and perhaps the emotions she feels on being left alone in such a way. Carter had only hinted at her character being a conventional heroine of fairy tales; passive and meek. I wanted to explore why she would feel this way, how she would react, and whether I could alter this view so that she is more concerned with her relationship with the Marquis rather than screaming bloody murder.

Unlike a traditional fairy-tale narrator, generally an impartial third person, this narrator is the heroine herself. By giving the heroine a voice, Carter challenged the fairy-tale tradition of our seeing, from the outside, events befall an innocent girl. Letting the distressed heroine tell her story empowers the figure of woman by putting her in the traditionally male-dominated roles of storyteller and survivor instead of relegating her to the role of helpless princess. In The Bloody Chamber, the heroine tells us personally about how her suffering became the source of her enlightenment.

I wanted to replicate the way in which Carter empowers her character by making her a poor pianist that marries primarily for money. I did this by continuing her interior monologue into how she feels about her husband and their marriage and whether she could believe what she was about to see. I included his past, such as “the first ever mistress of this mansion during her performance of Isolde; that opulently draped diva”, in order to reflect upon the character’s own inexperience and wonder whether this was the reason he had left her alone to find such a scene.

I have kept the setting of my narrative the same as it is before and after the gap in the narrative; the chamber she has wandered into. I wanted to focus on the underlying feeling of her being trapped, in this case, literally in a stone dungeon, to symbolise being trapped in the marriage. Keeping with the narrative, the atmosphere was one of tension within the character’s own mind, emphasised by the gargoyle statues in the room, watching her every move, as though the Marquis had never left, leaving her unable to relax.

Carter uses a variety of syntax in her work, ranging from two short words to whole paragraphs without a full stop. Instead, she uses semi-colons. I have tried to re-capture this style in my work. It is most evident during the second paragraph, in which there are three long sentences and one short one. I have also used certain phallic symbols such as; ‘stiff, solid posture and smooth, glossy marble texture’ to describe the gargoyles, and ‘recline so comfortably upon the cushion of his wealth’, ‘feed his fiendish desire’  ‘lay writhing on a bed of stone’ and ‘penetrating’ to interweave sexual ambiguity into the narrative. She raises her eyes ‘heaven-ward’, symbolising a religious undercurrent within the text, since gargoyles are typically seen to ‘guard’ churches.

When the Marquis is present, he dominates the relationship, able to make her do as he wishes. The colour used to symbolise their relationship is mostly red, symbolising male dominance and their sexual relationship. This is also used in other stories, such as “The Company of Wolves” to symbolise virginity and hormonal urges. In this extract however, I have used the colour blue to describe the ‘bitter blue breeze penetrating in’. This is because the character is worried and apprehensive, and the colour blue would feel chilly, bringing out goose-bumps in such a situation. I have also described her as having a dim ‘grey mind’ to emphasise the numbness of her brain after learning of her husband keeping something from her, of not knowing him at all, of the knowledge that she had married such a man and will have to spend the rest of her life there.

To the reader, this passage between the original narrative implies that the character knows the truth about her husband but refuses to believe it at first, insisting that “ludicrous scenes” are a part of her “delirious state of half-sleep” although the truth slowly scrapes away at the back of her mind.

I believe this piece, while fitting well into the narrative, lacks Angela Carter’s unique style and depth in the characters. On reflection, I would have concentrated the character’s thoughts into a rational sense of fear and explored this emotion.

First Impressions and their role in Pride & Prejudice

First impressions take up a major role in the plot of Pride and Prejudice as they form the main basis of how the characters interact with each other within most of the story, as is conveyed below:

Pride and Prejudice is a novel about overcoming obstacles and achieving romantic success. For the protagonists, Elizabeth and Darcy, one of the main obstacles they need to overcome is what the novel was originally named; First Impressions. These first impressions begin at the ball in which Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley are initially introduced to the rest of the characters. Without the two main leads even interacting with each other, each has their mind made up about the other.

Darcy, the proud noblewoman’s nephew must break free from his original dismissal of Elizabeth as ‘not handsome enough to tempt me,’ and from his class – based prejudice against her lack of wealth and family connections. However, Elizabeth’s first impressions register Darcy as arrogant and self-satisfied; as a result, she later accepts malicious accusations against him as true.

Both Elizabeth and Darcy are forced to come to grips with their own initial mistakes. The first half of the novel outlines Darcy's progression to the point at which he is able to admit his love in spite of his prejudice. In the second half, Elizabeth's mistaken impressions are displaced by realizations about Darcy's true character.

Darcy's two proposals to Elizabeth chart the mature development of their relationship. He delivers the first at the mid-point of the novel, when he has realized his love for Elizabeth but has not yet escaped his prejudices against her family, and when she is still in the grip of her first, negative impression of him.

The second proposal—in which Darcy humbly restates his love for her and Elizabeth, now with full knowledge of Mr. Darcy's good character, happily accepts—marks the arrival of the two characters, each finally achieving the ability to view the other through unprejudiced eyes.

The marriage between Darcy and Elizabeth reveals the characteristics that constitute a successful marriage. One of these characteristics is that the feeling cannot be brought on by appearances, and must gradually develop between the two people as they get to know one another.

In the beginning, Elizabeth and Darcy were distant from each other because of their prejudice. The series of events which they both experienced gave them the opportunity to understand one another and the time to reconcile their feelings for each other. Thus, their mutual understanding is the foundation of their relationship and will lead them to a peaceful and lasting marriage. This relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy reveals the importance of getting to know one’s partner before marrying and not judging them from first impressions.

Owen's portrayal of Memory & the Physiological effects of War - The Sentry

"I try not to remember these things now" (THE SENTRY)

 

The poem The Sentry is an accurate and detailed account of an actual event that occurred while Owen’s company were occupying a German dugout on the front line. This can be seen in his letters to his mother. Within the poem, Owen describes the conditions of the waterlogged dugout as it is hammered by explosions, until a sentry he had posted was blasted into the dugout by an explosion. He then goes on to describe the soldier himself, and how his appearance and sobbing haunted Owen in his dreams.

The language throughout the poem is simple, which lends its defining trait of gritty texture and onomatopoeia to the poem to great effect. ‘Hammered on top’, referring to the shelling, gives a powerful impression of the relentless assault on the aural sense the soldiers suffered, and this is further depicted later on in the poem with the phrase ‘shrieking air’, which likens the sounds of war to an almost inhuman and banshee-like scream. ‘What murk of air remained stank old, and sour’ focuses on the sensation of smell, and along with the visual description of the ‘guttering’ rain compared to slime, and the dugout steps ‘too thick with clay to climb’ paint the scene in the full spectrum of human sensation. It is not just horrific scenes that are recalled, but sounds and smells too. Like in Dulce et decorum est, as much as the narrator tries to forget, he cannot.  “In all my dreams before my helpless sight / He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.” The memories become stronger the more he tries to forget, even the smallest details aren’t left out. These vivid, visceral and disorienting memories almost mock the narrator’s attempt to not remember. The use of harsh, violent, progressive verbs makes the physiological damage the soldiers suffer even more violent.

The sounds of the words are a main tool of Wilfred Owen’s poems, and this poem is no exception. In the opening lines, he uses a combination of repetition and rhyme in ‘…hell, for shell on frantic shell’ and ‘hour by hour…sour’ to establish the cadence, and this, along with the heavy dull sounds of ‘thud! flump! thud!’ later in the poem all reinforce the reference to an endless hammering, and the continuity strengthens the impression of the ceaseless barrage. To describe the shells as frantic gives a sense of the terror and confusion they inspired, but also blurs the distinction between objects and humans, in a similar way in which he insinuated that soldiers had been dehumanized and ‘die as cattle’ in Anthem for Doomed Youth. These repetitive sounds give the impression that these memories are recurring, they go through the soldier’s mind often and he is unable to stop this repetitive loop. The alliteration of the ‘t’ sound in ‘wild chattering of his broken teeth’ emphasises what is already an unpleasant image, through the rattling of the consonant, and this again displays how Owen ensured that his poetry was effective not only through the power and horror of his topic, but through the sounds and rhythm the words create.

The sentry himself is introduced as being distinct from his physical being, with ‘The sentry’s body’, making him seem like nothing more than an object possessed by life rather than a living human being. One of the most effective similes Wilfred Owen employs in the poem is comparing the sentry’s ‘huge-bulged’ eyes to those of a squid, as the grotesque and slimy sea creature being related to a person’s eyes, which have associations of beauty and innocence, is powerfully incongruous. The other soldiers are later described as ‘Those other wretches’, continuing the theme of war’s dehumanizing effect.  This is not dissimilar to the line “Treading blood from lungs that had once loved laughter.” from the poem Mental Cases. The grotesque images of the soldiers’ deformities are echoed here and by putting a negative image of blood with the positive image of laughter, Owen once again builds another incongruous image whereby the stark morbidity of blood is compared to the innocence of laughter. By doing this, Owen puts together bizarre images that ensure the reader does not forget such appalling memories and the physiological pain of the soldiers, just as he cannot. It also shows how the war must have looked to the soldiers who had never before experienced anything of the sort, and the tumultuous emotions they must have felt while trying to cope.

Pathetic fallacy presents nature as a theme of ‘The Sentry’. “Rain guttering down in waterfalls of slime / Kept slush waist-high and rising hour by hour”. These two lines explore the idea that nature has become the British Armies’ enemy and that the Germans have become less of a threat in comparison. The use of pathetic fallacy gives the poem an aura of inevitability and the rain seems to give the poem a sinister tone. In this sense, Owen presents the experience of war as a regrettable, dark one. This idea links in with the poem ‘Futility’ where pathetic fallacy is also used. The use of the technique on the words ‘sun’ and ‘snow’ gives the poem different contrasting ideas of hope and despair, similar to the words “lights” and “died out” in the last line.

Owen’s recollection of the memories of war and its physiological effects, as described in The Sentry are very similar to those in Disabled. Both poems describe the persona in the poem forlornly remembering the days he was at war and how they affected him. The lines “Now he will never feel again how slim / Girls’ waists are” show not only the pain in the physical loss of his arm, but also the psychological scars, as the soldier knows he will be shunned for it. Owen sees memory as neither good nor bad, but describes the role it plays in helping the soldiers get through the war, as well as taking them back to it well after they are freed from it. ‘Although memories are not necessarily a bad thing, they may tie you down to a past you wish to escape’ seems to be his message across his poems.