{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} [[File:The Dead Beat Wilfred Owen.jpg|thumb|An early draft of the poem Owen included in a letter to Leslie Gunston in August 1917]] "'''The Dead-Beat'''" is a poem by Wilfred Owen. It deals with the atrocities of World War I.
==Composition== Owen developed the poem while he was a patient at Craiglockhart, a hospital for officers suffering with mental illness.<ref name = Joyes>{{Cite journal| last = Joyes| first = Kaley| title = Regenerating Wilfred Owen: Pat Barker's revisions| journal = Mosaic | volume = 42| issue = 3| year = 2009| pages = 169–83| issn= 0027-1276}}</ref> It was here that he met fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon and where his personal psychological healing from the traumas of war. "The Dead-Beat" marked the beginning of his writings as representations of soldiers who could no longer tell their own stories.<ref>Hipp, Daniel. ''The Poetry of Shell Shock: Wartime Trauma and Healing in Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney, and Siegfried Sassoon''. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005: 54. {{ISBN|0-7864-2174-6}}</ref>
In writing the poem, Owen received help from Sassoon, who he elsewhere called one of his dearest friends. Sassoon's influence is apparent particularly in the poem's anger over injustice.<ref name=Cuthbertson204/> Owen described the experience in a letter in which he suggested that the middle sections needed work.<ref name = Joyes/> The night he met Sassoon, he began writing "The Dead-Beat", as described in the letter: "After leaving him, I wrote something in Sassoon's style... The last thing he said was 'Sweat your guts out writing poetry!' 'Eh?' says I. 'Sweat your guts out, I say!'"<ref>Hipp, Daniel. ''The Poetry of Shell Shock: Wartime Trauma and Healing in Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney, and Siegfried Sassoon''. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005: 55. {{ISBN|0-7864-2174-6}}</ref> Pat Barker, in her novel ''Regeneration'', describes a fictitious workshop between the poets based on this letter.<ref name = Joyes/>
==Analysis== Like many of his poems about the war, Owen explored both courage and cowardice in "The Dead-Beat".<ref>Cuthbertson, Guy. ''Wilfred Owen''. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014: 217. {{ISBN|978-0-300-15300-2}}</ref> He also attempts to emulate the vernacular of a common soldier in a realistic war setting.<ref name=Cuthbertson204>Cuthbertson, Guy. ''Wilfred Owen''. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014: 204. {{ISBN|978-0-300-15300-2}}</ref> In particular, "The Dead-Beat" depicts how war can isolate rather than unite individuals who share common causes or experiences.<ref>Hipp, Daniel. ''The Poetry of Shell Shock: Wartime Trauma and Healing in Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney, and Siegfried Sassoon''. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005: 66. {{ISBN|0-7864-2174-6}}</ref>
==References== {{reflist}} {{Wikisource|Poems_by_Wilfred_Owen/The_Dead-Beat|The Dead-Beat}}
{{Wilfred Owen}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dead-Beat}} Category:Poetry by Wilfred Owen Category:World War I poems
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