Maybe we're all mental cases

(Found at: https://supernaturalgospel.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/hell.jpg)

     During our discussion on Wednesday, we ended by talking about Wilfred Owen's poem "Mental Cases." I though we made considerable progress in analyzing the poem, but we didn't make it to talking about the last couple of lines, which I found particularly significant. The questions that comprise the opening of the poem ask who "these hellish," these "mental cases" are, but the last line answers a different question all together. They serve to answer how they got to be "mental cases" to begin with. The answer is chilling: "Snatching after us who smote them, brother, / Pawing us who dealt them war and madness" (219). The speaker changes the focus of the poem, from describing the men ravaged and tormented by war to laying the burden on himself and the society that sent these men into hell for their sake. Knowing this, I looked back over the poem and it gave a new layer of meaning. Not only does it describe the physical and mental degradation of those sent to war, but it also claims that we are the reason it is the case. We are responsible for "deal[ing] them war and madness." As such, we must remember our own part in the desecration of their innocence and humanity. Perhaps the question of "who these hellish" are is not merely asking who these men are, but telling us that we too are hellish. Does it not make us even more hellish that we have rendered these men unrecognizable?