Introduction: This is a recording of my individual orals for language and literature.

My line of inquiry is politics,

power, and justice. I am going to discuss the long-term effect of war on the soldiers using the 2 texts first one being
the poem Mental Cases by Owen and the second being a magazine cover titled Vietnam. We have heard about hostile
wars over the past years like the world wars and even witnessed the ongoing ones in the contemporary world such as
the Russia-Ukraine war and the South Sudan civil war. Eventually, soldiers and victims who undertake different
missions during the wars are severely affected. Hence an issue of global significance worth exploring.

My literary text is the poem Mental Cases written in 1983 by Wilfred Owen a World War 1 poet who as a soldier
labels war through his poems as the ultimate evil, subverting all the values that human beings might hold dear. The
poem exposes the trauma that haunts soldiers and the pain inflicted on these young people through the voice of a
desperate, stigmatized, and emotionally destabilized persona.
Whereas my non-literary cover is a Times Magazine Cover titled Vietnam of 1995. This is a powerful representation
of the dire and pathetic state that the soldiers are in as a result of the horror and the hostility of war that not only left
them with a physical disability but also destabilized their minds.

Mental Cases
Owen uses dominant techniques like creative and selective title, word choice, and characterization in the poem to
steer the readers into picturing the terrific mental status of the soldiers as an ideal consequence of war. These
techniques are systematically built upon each other in a way that describes in perfect detail the awful symptoms of
mental torment undergone by the persona as a representative voice of the soldiers.

Feature 1: As part of the author's wise choice of words, the use of loaded language largely embeds a sense of lost
humanity that is brought by the dehumanizing effects in different forms. For instance, the capitalized word ‘ ravished’
that Owen steadfastly uses to describe the soldier's mind as carried away by the dead. This along with other words
such as sloughs of flesh, human squander, flying muscles and lungs confirm the sense of how the war has stripped
off their humanity into walking corpses and skeletons with flying muscles and lungs. These are also associated with
the disoriented minds of the soldiers hence leading the reader to picture a hellish kind of life for soldiers returning
from the battlefield, their bodies and mind distorted by the horrors they witnessed and the harsh reality of war
portrayed through the language choice as stated in the stanza 2 line 3 “This hilarious, hideous, awful, falseness of set
smiling corpse”.

Feature 2: The metaphoric title ‘mental cases’ despite sounding ruthless and as an insult reflects the reality of the
label that is found most suitable to call these soldiers as they were viewed more as medical cases and less as people.
The title is an influential exposure to the reader of the scanty position and status these soldiers hold in the aftermath of
war as they are just but mental cases who are facing the suffering of the ongoing psychological torment and trauma
imposed by the wartime experiences.
Feature 3: Besides, Owen adopts a greater concern for the misconception and misrepresentation of the soldiers. With
this, the use of characterization is a significant tool of giving a distinctive characterization of the soldiers using a
war-tone persona who presents a differing picture from how they are usually portrayed as brave, strong, handsome,
and trained heroes of a nation and confront’ the soldiers’ gruesome physical pain and disturbed mental state as that
filled with terror and nightmares of the battlefield. The poem characterize the soldiers as those who after fighting in
the physical battle field are left with even worse internal mental war to fight within themselves.

Twenty years later, it haunts us still

This magazine cover by Times magazine purposes to depict the hostilities of the war. This is achieved through the
utilization of visual image, color scheme and typography to vividly paint the picture of the soldier’s menatl suffering
in the text

Feature 1: The deployment of visual image is used as an evidence to rally the public behind a common goal of not
using human forces as war tool and spreading the truth of the mental effect of war on soldiers .using the photogragh
of two hopeless soldiers wounded and having bandages wrapped in their eyes , heads it evokes the scary sensory
experience in the readers sense and subject of emotional outrage. This iconic photo and the intensity of the subjects
represents the sense of hopelessness, powerlessness and innocence among the soldiers. It also feature melancloly and
socially withdrawn state of the soldiers as the soldiers are lonely, suffering and with no one to take care of them
despite their great sacrifice to fight for their nation.

Feature 2: To emphasize on the chaos and the melancholy of the soldiers, the colour sheme and tone is the image is
further developed as a monochromatic photograph as it features the subjects in varying shades of neutral of geray
without including any clour. Since black and white are not considerd as colour this shows how the life of soldiers
lacks the vibrancy and beauty of coloutr as a result of the effect of war. It aslo expresse the emotions of the soldiers
without distraction of colour as that without life and mind filled with negative energy..
Moreover, the dark dull colour scheme and tone relates the soldiers in the text to ghostly beings who are outcasts and
has nothing good in life but darkness, tortute of death and pain while a red margin is used to suggest the frequent
interaction with blood and and blood drops of the innocent children , women and innocent people that they killed
being reflected in their mind inform of guilt, trauma and regret

Feature 3: Typography in this magazine cover silently signify the normalized suffering , torment and shadow of
death within the soldier’s life to even 20 years after the war.The words ‘Twenty years later, it haunts us still’ bolden
and written in white fonts to create more contrast between the text and background hence enhancing more
readability and emphasy of the text hence contradicting the somber tone of the wordings and of the context. The
words ‘special report’ are capitalized, enabling the audience realize the agency of the need to adress the hostility of
war on soldiers. s.
Comparisons and contrast
Both the literary and non-literary utilizes the readers established sense of sympathy and empathy in portraying the
great eefect of war on the mental health soldiers by using their respective techniques in painting a picture of the
desolate state of the soldiers in the aftermath of war. Using such techniques such as efficient word choice,metaphoric
title, colour scheme, typography, and visual imagery steers the audience into picturing the terrific mental status of the
soldiers as an ideal consequence of war .However the Poem directly gives the soldiers’ thoughts througt the persona
representingn the soldiers while the magazine cover only gives a clue of the subjects through the label Vietnam in red
and the phrase ‘ 20 yrs it haunts us still’ to give link and relate the image in the magazine cover to the soldiers in the
Vietnam war yet does’nt give exact message hence giving the audience the freedom to have wide range of connections
of the magazine cover to the longterm effect of war on the poor mental soldiers.

Conclusion
Adressing this global issue is significant as we are able to see how literature has been a key medium in speaking out
the great effect of war on mental health of soldiers such as the post Traumatic Stress Disorder , depression and drug
addiction in trying to clear out their fate. Using the 2 texts, Mental Cases by Owen and Vietnam from Times
Magazines I have been able to explore how the texts portrays how physical pain, mental trauma, and neglect by
society after war thus consequently causing stigma, inflated spirit, and psychological suffering among soldiers in the
memory of the disturbing experience.