Exposure Flashcards
Who wrote the poem?
Wilfred Owen
Poems to compare
Lack of hope - London
Realities of war - Remians, Charge of the Light briagade
Feelings and Attitudes
Pain - Phycical or emotional plain, fatigue, homesick
Boardon and Frustration - they are left to comptemplate their own death
Hopelessness - hopeless to fight the power of nature, nothing they can do to change their situation.
What does the cyclical structure show?
The next day will be the same, no change leading to hopelessness
This is emphasised by the fact that the peom is in present tense
Form and Structure?
Present tense (first person plural)(us...) - this collective voice shows a universal experience of a soldier Cyclical structure
Each stanza has a regular rhyme scheem (A,B,B,A,C) reflecting the repetetive natire of war. Rhymes are usually half rhymes showing that there is no confort in the comfort of satisafsction
The rhymes could also reflect the confused or fatigued nature of the men’s experiences
Each stanza ends in a half line which leaves an empty space which could represent a lack of hope or activity if the men
Fist and last stanza are set at night ending with “nothing happens” creating a cyclical strutre
Describe the poet?
Fought valientky in WW1 winning awards for bravory
He wrote the poem in the trenches and most of his poetry shows his anger at war and the waste of life it causes
What does the title infer?
Negative connetations
Showing it was a painfull experience for all
“Our brains ache”
Start of the poem
Personification of the wind?
Explain
“merciless iced east winds that knife
us…”
Elipsis emphasises that they are waiting for somethingbut that it never happens
Christmas carrol
“night is silent”
Justoposition
Different emottions
First stanza ?
“confuse”
“Worried”(start of a line)”curious, nervous”
Confusion of tenses highlights their fatigue
“Watching, we hear”
Showing us natures ability to cause pain
“mad gusts tugging on the wire
Like twitching agonies”
Suggetsing that they arn’t part of the actual war
“like a dull rumour of some other war”
Time phrase
Explain
“Misory of dawn”
Dawn normaly is positive but for them it is another day of exposure
Personofication of dawn with an army
Explain
“Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
Attacks”
Personifided using the semantic field of military
Melancholy means deppressing, dark and misrable
How is dawn atatcking
Explain the colour
“Ranks of shivering ranks of grey”
Grey shows a lack of hope and how everything on the battle field is dead also the German unoforms were grey
Rhetorical question at the end of stanza 2
“What are we doing her”
He is questoning the point of war
End of stanza 1,3,4,8
Explain
“But nothing happens”
Short simple half line emphasises bordom and tention (war is not all action)
This is highlighted by the repetition.
The poem ends on this line showing how even death can’t stop this cycle
Change of pace at the start of stanza 4
Explain
“Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence”
Sibilance chages the pace of the poem and mimics the sounds of bullets flying
Snow is shown as desth
“Black with snow”
Normally anow is white (purity)
here it is black (death)
Snow flakes
Find better clue
“Flowing flakes that flock”
Repetition of fh sound emphasises the relentlessness of the weather
Repetition of “f” sound agressive
“Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces”
End of stanza 5
“Is it that we are dying?”
Another question possible answering the first
Assonance of the elongated vowel sounds makes the imagined joirney seem painful and slow
“Slowly our ghosts drag home:…”
They go back to doing something
“We turn back to our dying.”
End stop shows that there is nothing else to do
Showing a cyclial structure?
“Tonight”
Link between humans and nature!
“mud and us”
Suggest they are no more important than mud
Maybe if they die they will become mud
Could be someone who has been disfigured pr showing the horrors of war
“half-known faces”
He doesn’ want to know anyone deep down in case they die
Could be a disfigured face
What does the rhyme sceem represent?
ABBAC
This shows a build up in tention with the ABBA but the last line stops the tention with the C as nothign happens
