Loss and suffering are explored in ‘Disabled’, ‘Out, Out—’ and The Necklace via either grief for something or someone lost, or in the case of The Necklace, the loss of the life the protagonist believes she should have led. [Marking comment]
In Owen’s ‘Disabled’, the poet creates sympathy for the soldier by contrasting his current helpless and utterly dependent situation, injured as he is from the war, with his youth when he was full of life and vitality. The poem opens with the soldier sitting in his “wheeled chair” as he “shivered” waiting for darkness. The darkness is metaphorical, suggesting that perhaps the soldier is waiting for death to relieve him of his current suffering. The man is described as wearing a “ghastly suit of grey”, and colour symbolism is used throughout the poem as a metaphor for strength and life. This soldier has lost his colour, and therefore his strength and passion for life. The poet contrasts this with the bright, colourful and romantic language used to describe the soldier’s past, highlighting his yearning for lost times. [Marking comment]
Owen uses a lexical field of light and warmth, with “glow-lamps”, “light blue trees” and the warmth of the girls’ “subtle hands” to suggest that the soldier feels a yearning for the light and warmth found through physical touch and affection. However, the fact that girls only touch him now like “some queer disease” evokes a sense of bitterness and suggests he took his able-bodiedness for granted and “threw away his knees”. It is revealed that the soldier was underage when he enlisted, having no “fears of Fear” then, only thinking of the glory he thought war would bring, with its “jewelled hilts” and “smart salutes”. The personification of Fear suggests that this emotion overrode all of the positive propaganda involved with being a soldier, and the poet implies that the idea of war and the reality are two very different things. The reflective “he wonders why” in the third stanza, with the dash used as a caesura interrupting the line just as the man’s injuries have interrupted his life, suggests that he originally thought that signing up to the army would be a good thing. The “solemn man” who appreciated him perhaps understood his plight and suffering, suggesting he may have seen through the propagandist lies of war, or witnessed its horrors first hand. [Marking comment]
The theme of suffering and loss in Maupassant’s The Necklace is represented by the physical loss of the necklace and the resulting suffering that ensues. [Marking comment] Mathilde is described as “unhappy all the time” as her vanity meant that she believed herself to be intended for a “life of refinement and luxury”. She dreams so vividly of “great drawing-rooms dressed with old silk” that the lack of such things in her life feels as profoundly distressing as an actual loss to her. Even when her husband gives her the 400 francs to buy a dress in order to attend the evening event, she is still vexed that she didn’t have a “single piece of jewellery”. The writer employs contrast — the description of the couple’s humble dwelling and life is juxtaposed with the descriptions of finery that Mathilde dreams of — to highlight that her suffering is largely self-inflicted, as other women “of her station” would not have been so unhappy with her lot. Instead, she humbles herself to ask for a loan from her more well-off friend, and feels a sense of immeasurable gain when she returns home with her “treasure”. [Marking comment]
The end of the evening reception and the couple’s attempts to get home again highlight the sense of loss Mathilde feels, as they “walked sadly” up to their apartment; for her, “it was all over”. The loss of the necklace borrowed from Madame Forestier marks a turning point for both Mathilde and her husband, marked by the short sentence “they had lost all hope”. Its loss meant financial ruin for Loisel, and a lifetime of suffering with the prospect of “all the physical privation and mental torture ahead”.
Mathilde and her husband end up suffering for a decade as they struggle to pay back their enormous debt from the loss of the necklace. Mathilde is a martyr for a cause: her desire for symbols of wealth stems from her belief that anything that appears expensive must be truly worthwhile. Therefore, she does not think of her suffering as moral punishment for her greed, but more as a transaction — she was wealthy for a night and now she must pay the price. She justifies her suffering through her belief that the necklace was worth ten years of poverty. The ways in which she suffers seem to be in direct response to her prior vanities and greed. She felt poor and found her life to be inadequate. The single paragraph “they lived like this for ten years” emphasises their period of prolonged suffering, and at the end of the short story, Madame Forestier has not changed while Madame Loisel was no longer recognisable. This emphasises just how much she has lost — not just in terms of finances but also the loss of her youth and her looks. [Marking comment]
In ‘Out, Out—’, Frost explores loss and suffering through the central message that life is both fragile and short. The personification of the saw as it “snarled and rattled” suggests that it has a mind of its own and, therefore, there are forces outside of one’s control that can affect one’s life. The child is repeatedly referred to as “boy” or “the boy” which, combined with the third person perspective, leaves the reader feeling detached from the child, implying that this tragic event could have happened to any of several children at the time. The loss of their childhood and innocence is conveyed by the fact that he was a “big boy” and “doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—”. The poem’s abrupt ending seems to question the value of a life cut so tragically short, and offers no comfort in death as there’s “no more to build on there”. Death is final and irreversible, and ultimately mundane, as the other characters in the poem go back to their normal routine. [Marking comment]
The boy’s suffering is revealed in the panic he feels as he holds up his hand “as if to keep/The life from spilling”. He urgently implores “Don’t let him cut my hand off—” which he repeats to his sister, but his pleas are futile as the “hand was gone already” and the doctor tries to relieve his suffering by sedating him. The description of the boy’s death, with “Little-less-nothing!---and that ended it” lacks any sense of emotion or grief, suggesting that the child’s suffering is meaningless and, by extension, so are the lives of the workers. [Marking comment]
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