This article offers a comparative reading of Wilfred Owen’s ‘Disabled’ and W.H. Auden’s ‘Refugee Blues’. It explores how both poets critique the limitations of ‘pity’ in response to wartime suffering. While each poem elicits compassion for marginalized victims of war—the maimed soldier in Owen’s text and the displaced Jewish refugees in Auden’s—the article argues that such compassion is presented as being ethically insufficient if it remains in a passive state. Drawing on affect theory (Ahmed), trauma theory (Caruth, LaCapra), ethical criticism (Levinas) and Marxist critique (Eagleton), it aims to demonstrate how, through their use of irony, their depiction of marginalization, and their critique of bureaucratic systems and institutions, Owen and Auden transform ‘pity’ into a moral indictment. Ultimately, they challenge the reader not just to feel, but to confront their complicity in a world where suffering is commodified, displaced, and often ignored.
- Quote paper
- Professor Vivienne Suvini-Hand (Author), 2025, Beyond Pity. Owen, Auden, and the Enduring Ethics of War and Displacement, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1608929
