Exposure Flashcards
poet name
wilfred owen
Overall summary
Tells the horrifying story of a brutal experience in the trenches during ww2.it shows the reader the massive burden placed on the soldiers not only by the opposing army but the weather .it also subverts traditional ideas of the glory of war by showing visceral and hurrying reality that most soldiers face.it exposes the trauma faced by soldiers whilst also showing how mentally taxing war can be on those who fight in it.
structure?
ellipsis,ceasura and repition to highlight the exposure and time the men were stuck in the horrible conditions
Context?
-Wilfred Owen was a soldier,killed in battle one week before the armistice.
-Owen’s wrote his poetry to express the horror of war as opposed to internalising it
-was written in 1917 as Owen’s was at war in the trenches,creating an impression of salience on the reader.
-Owen dispelled this myth by “exposing”the harsh realities and virulence of war
“our brains ache in the merciless iced east winds that knive us”
-upsets our expectation of war, the winds are the enemy
-irony that nature itself is attacking the men
-nature is turning against the barbaric nature of man and killing them, personifying nature as being some sort of punishment
-merciless shows how they show no mercy upon the men, they deserve this punishment as they have brought war to the land
-assonance of the repeated “i” slows down the rhythm of the lines and mirrors the exposure the author was feeling
-owen draws out the length of the line to mimic the length of time the soldiers were in the trenches being exposed to these conditions
“dawn massing in the east her melancholy army”
-personification of the weather arming itself
-massing suggests there is much more danger in the weather then the german soldiers
-pathetic fallacy of melancholy reflecting the miserable lives of the men at the time, the weather is miserable itself it doesn’t want to attack that men but it feels as if it has to, to expel this horror of war from nature
“therefore,not loath,we lie out here;therefore were born, for the love of god seems dying”
-shows how hes not hating(loath) and is happy to lie out in these harsh conditions as he is protecting his country
-therefore were born shows the reason he was born is to carry out his patriotic duties
-for the love of God seems dying highlights how countries have turned away from christianity
-ambiguity of lie highlights how he could be lying about how hes happy about carrying out these patriotic duties
-owen hated the idea to die for your country
-metaphor suggests love is dying,especially for god,war is proof of that, if we actually loved god we would not be at war
“pause over half known faces. all their eyes are ice, But nothing happens
-illustrates how the men are literally and metaphorically dying
-literal death is presented in half known, this also suggests the men died quickly, they have not been fighting long enough to be known by others or they did not want to form emotional bonds with one and other
-metaphors of their eyes being ice, the dead soldiers eyes are like ice because they have been frozen stiff, however this shows how the men who are burying them have become emotionally stiff, war has made them unable to show empathy
-homophone eyes suggesting their identities have become ice
-but nothing happens shows how the soldiers would prefera death to bullets and fighting,also shows polically nothing is changing
Exposure quotaions
-“pause over half known faces. all their eyes are ice, But nothing happens”
-“dawn massing in the east her melancholy army”
-“our brains ache in the merciless iced east winds that knive us”
-“therefore,not loath,we lie out here;therefore were born, for the love of god seems dying
