Exposure Flashcards
by Wilfred Owen
1
Q
Name two key ideas
A
- effects of conflict
- reality of war
- power of nature
- loss + absence
2
Q
What are two pieces of context
A
- written in 1918 - during WW1
- Owen was inspired by Siegfried Sassoon
- Owen primarily wrote about war - ‘Dulce et Decorum est’
3
Q
What poems can Exposure be compared to
A
- Remains
- War photographer
4
Q
Structural features of Exposure
A
- slant rhyme = surprise readers by creating unease
- chaotic structure = mirrors chaos and panic caused by war
- ellipses = emphasises boredom and reflects soldiers frustration
- refrain = reiterates futility of war
- caesura = physical barrier created between soldiers and home
- cyclical structure = reinforces perpetual nature of war and its pointlessness
5
Q
What is the writers message
A
- The idea that soldiers are insignificant and dispensable needs to be quashed as it only enhances their disillusionment and PTSD
6
Q
Merciless iced east winds that knive us
A
- personification
- sibilance
7
Q
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous
A
- asyndetic list
- sibilance
8
Q
Mad gusts tugging … like twitching agonies of men among its brambles
A
- simile
9
Q
What are we doing here?
A
- rhetoric
10
Q
Dawn massing in the east … her melancholy army
A
- personification
- metaphor
11
Q
Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces
A
- personification
- fricative
- metaphor
12
Q
Sudden successive bullets streak the silence
A
- sibilance
13
Q
Flowing flakes that flock
A
- fricative
14
Q
Doors are closed
A
15
Q
We turn back to our dying
A
