First World War Poetry Digital Archive

The Wrestlers

Now look at at a synopsis of the story of Antaeus on Wikipedia. Owen's doctor, Captain Arthur Brock, believed that every patient at Craiglockhart was 'in himself an Antaeus who has been taken from his Mother Earth and well-nigh crushed to death by the war giant or military machine'. The patient needed to be reconnected with Mother Earth (their environment) to gain strength the strength to return to fight.