Language and Literature Internal Assessment.

Outline Form.

Line of Inquiry: Politics, Power, and Justice.

Global Issue: Effect of War on the mental health of Soldiers.

Texts Chosen:
Literary text- Mental cases
Non-literary text: Vietnam

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.