Mental Cases Summary & Analysis
by Wilfred Owen

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"Mental Cases" was written by the British poet and WWI soldier Wilfred Owen, who was killed in action in November 1918. As with much of Owen's poetry, "Mental Cases" focuses on the horrors of war, and in particular the ongoing psychological effects of wartime trauma. Owen based the poem on his own experiences in Edinburgh's Craiglockhart military hospital, where soldiers were often sent for recovery from "shell-shock" (now known as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD). Using grotesque, visceral imagery, "Mental Cases" builds a picture of life as a kind of living hell for soldiers returning from the battlefield, their bodies and minds irrevocably ravaged by the horrors they witnessed.

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