2️⃣ Exposure

Question 1

Who was it written by?

Answer 1

Wilfred Owen

Question 2

When is this poem based?

Answer 2

WW1

Question 3

When and where was it written?

Answer 3

1917
In the trenches

Question 4

Our brains ache

Answer 4

Metaphor and collective pronoun shows collective suffering of soldiers

Question 5

In the merciless iced east winds that knive us

Answer 5

Personification of wind suggests the weather is the enemy
Hyperbole exaggerates the cold
Sibilance imitates the wind and shivering cold

Question 6

Silent…
Salient…

Answer 6

Pararhyme and ellipses slows pace emblematic of long sleepless night
Wrapped up in thoughts and anticipation vs. Then reality

Question 7

Worried by the silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
But nothing happens

Answer 7

Expectation
Sibilants imitates whispers and anticipation of an attack

Long syntax and ellipses, pararhyme and long lines slows pace and imitates long sleepless night

Question 8

Mad gust tugging on the wire

Answer 8

Personification of wind suggests it’s teasing them

Question 9

Like twitching agonies of men among its Brambles

Answer 9

Simile
Part of the semantic field of nature and weather
Imagery suggest the soldiers are trapped through metaphor

Question 10

What are we doing here?

Answer 10

Rhetorical question questions the morality of war

Question 11

We only know that war lasts, rain soaks and clouds sag stormy

Answer 11

Sibilance imitates the weather

Question 12

We only know that war lasts, rain soaks and clouds sag stormy

Answer 12

Sibilance imitates the weather

Question 13

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey

Answer 13

Incessant attack of weather, which is the true enemy shown through pathetic fallacy

Question 14

But nothing happens.

Answer 14

Anticlimactic refrain throughout the poem which highlights the futility of war and questions wars morality.

Question 15

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence

Answer 15

Sibilance imitates bullets
Sudden is unexpected

Question 16

Winds nonchalance

Answer 16

Weather doesn’t care

Question 17

Pale flakes with fingering stealth

Answer 17

Personification = snow is the enemy Hyperbole

Question 18

Punctuation

Answer 18

Commas, dashes, ellipses: all Slow down pace

Question 19

So we drowse, sun dozed

Answer 19

Hint to hallucination

Question 20

In stanzas 6 and 7

Answer 20

Semantic field of abandonment
Our ghost drag home,
Nor ever suns smiles true on child
On us the doles are closed

Question 21

On us all the doors are closed

Answer 21

Metaphor
So distant from home in time and place they barely remember

Question 22

We turn back to our dying

Answer 22

Metaphor
No escape from thoughts of death

Question 23

For gods invincible spring

Answer 23

Allusion to heaven

Question 24

For love of God seems dying

Answer 24

Hope is being lost in war - futility
Faith is being disbanded and they feel abandonment (semantic field)

Question 25

Tonight this frost will fasten on this mud and us

Answer 25

Return to present in last stanza creates a circular narrative

Question 26

What perspective is it?

Answer 26

1st person plural to highlight collective suffering of soldiers

Question 27

What is the rhyme scheme like?

Answer 27

Regular rhyme scheme ABBAC -uniformity shows monotonous nature of men’s experiences offering no comfort or satisfaction and incessant monotony of trench life Pararhyme unsettles reader and helps to defy the expected outcome conveying the futility of war

Question 28

What does the Pararhyme do?

Answer 28

Disruptive of rhythmic structure which uses hexameter as its basis