Exposure Flashcards
What is the structure like throughout the poem?
Circular.
What does the poem start and end with?
‘But’.
Nothing happens in the opening or closing stanzas.
What do the opening and closing stanzas show?
The repetitive nature of conflict.
What does the rhetorical question and ellipses show?
Futility of suffering.
What does the inclusive language show?
‘We’ ‘Our’.
Show suffering of more than one solider.
What does the poet cover?
One day in the life of conflict.
Name some language techniques used?
Similes.
Metaphors.
Personification.
Alliteration and sibilance does what?
Capture the sounds of war despite the fighting being distant.
What does the weather show?
Personified as the enemy throughout.
What are the stanzas like?
Contrasting.
Regular.
What is the tone like throughout?
Bitter.
Sombre.
What does the title show ‘Exposure’?
Left uncovered.
Vulnerable.
Unprotected.
“Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us”
Wind is causing deliberate harm and is personified.
“Knive us”
Violent imagery.
“Night is silent”
Silence creates psychological suffering for the men waiting for something to happen.
“Entries whisper, curious, nervous”
Weather creates tension and suspense.
“But nothing happens”
Repeated phrase.
Conflict of waiting for something to happen but
“Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire”
Wind is personified as the enemy causing conflict.
“Like twitching agonies of men”
Simile to compare movement of wind to suffering of men on barbed wire.
Physical suffering.
“Flickering gunnery rumbles”
Onomatopoeia.
Creates the sound of war/conflict.
“Like a dull rumour of some other war”
Feeling of pointlessness.
Lack of purpose.
“The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow…”
Dawn breaks but nothing changes.
“What are we doing here?”
Powerlessness in war.
Rhetorical question.
“Dawn missing in the east her melancholy army”
Even the weather of a new day appears miserable.
“Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence”
Suddenly have war like activity.
Gunfire intensified by use of sibilance.
“Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow”
Personification.
Snow/cold is the real conflict, more terrifying than the sporadic gunfire.
“Winds nonchalance”
Weather does not care about their suffering.
“Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces”
Alliteration, highlights how weather is the enemy.
“We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed”
Trying to shelter from weather.
Disorientated mind drifts to happier times.
“Is it that we are dying?”
Think they are on the verge of death.
Memories and souls do what?
Escape conflict and travel back home.
What poem is this linked to?
The Man he Killed.
“We turn back to our dying”
Ambiguous death is imminent.
Dying soldiers around them.
“Therefore were born”
See suffering as a reason for living.
“For love of God seems dying”
Lost their faith in God.
Conflict is essential to protect home and survive.
“Tonight”
Poet covers whole day in the life of solider.
Conflict.
“His frost will fasten on this mud and us”
Idea of mud controls them.
Lives are worthless.
“Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp”
Suffering during conflict without gunfire.
Physical conflict.
“The burying party, picks and shovels in the shaking grasp”
To dispose of the dead soldiers shaking. cold, fear, mentally disturbed horror of burying friend.
“Half-known face”
Conflict has forever changed the appearance of people they once knew or they don’t know the people they fight alongside.
“All their eyes are ice”
Metaphor.
Lack of spirit.
Highlights death.
What does the poem end with?
Repeated line.
