Insensibility - Wilfred Owen (Additional English)

With bitter irony Owen presents in this poem the dehumanizing influence of war on man. Ironically the poet observes that if there are people who could become insensible before they are killed, then they are to be considered really lucky. Very often in war people i.e. soldiers allow their felling to be deadened. War has actually blunted the sense of pity of the soldiers for their dead comrades. So they march in the battlefield, trampling in the dead bodies of their comrades quite unconcerned.
When soldiers in the front line are mowed down by the enemy artillery, their comrades have no compassion for them. Though most of them are the youth of the country, its finest flowers, the callous soldiers think that it is sentimental nonsense for the poets to lament their death. The hardened soldiers feel that there is no need to mourn the death of their comrades. The gaps in the ranks caused by their death will be filled by a fresh batch of soldiers. No one is bothered about the loss of so much human material.
Some soldiers have stopped feeling for themselves. Owen thinks that in one sense it is a blessing to be bereft of feeling; insensibility is the best defense against the horrors and uncertainties of the war. The incalculable element in war is less puzzling to the soldiers than the figures in their pay bills. Happy are the soldiers deprived of imagination as that would only add to burden of ammunition they have to carry.
The soldiers do not shrink with disgust from the sight of blood because it is too common in the battlefield. Their senses are burnt by the cautery (hot iron): here, it is the gun. Their sense feeling is so much seared that they can laugh at the sight of their comrades’ death. Happy is the soldier who comes home without any nation that every morning some men attack and many lives are lost. The war-worn veterans’ march silently knowing fully that death will seize them as certainly as night follows day.
Let us not be moved by the bloodshed in the battle fled. We shell learn to kook at through the eyes of the callous soldiers. A soldier is never known for finer feelings which make a man’s life rich. Hence when a soldier dies, nothing of any value departs from him. The soldier dies not know the difference between the tranquil end of a well-lived life and towards the hysterical end of his own contemptible life. The poet towards the end of the poem openly condemns the brutalized soldier who is not shocked even by the boom of the cannon.
The civilians are immune to pity. They are cursed who cannot feel. Their lack of feeling was deliberate. By choice the soldiers made themselves immune to pity, immune to death and immune to misfortune. It is but natural that man feels for others suffering. The quality of pity should always spring in the human bosom. It is regrettable that this spring is dried up in us.