These two poems deal with traumatic experiences in different ways. Robert Frost's "Out, Out—" deals with the maiming of a boy by a sawmill as it happens. The poet powerfully describes the suddenness of the accident and the fear that the victim experiences, speaking with equal parts compassion and despair as it becomes clear that the boy is going to die. The accident and death of the boy in this poem are presented in shocking real time, as the events take place. The reader feels as helpless as the poem's speaker as the sad events unfold.

In Wilfred Owen's "Disabled," the poet describes a maimed former soldier who has returned home from the war. Unlike Frost, Owen does not describe the actual traumatic events that led this young man, a boy really, to lose his limbs in combat. Instead, we read of the aftermath. This is a sad poem, but not a shocking one. Owen paints a picture of a young man full of promise who optimistically marches off to war. He returns broken. He has lost all autonomy. He will never experience the life he hoped he would, and no one seems to care about him. The tragedy here is that he is fated to spend the rest of his life simply waiting for death to arrive.