Exposure

Question 1

The poem

Answer 1

• Soldiers in the trenches of World War One ate awake at night, afraid of an enemy attack.
• However, nature seems to be their main enemy, cold, windy and snowing.
• The men imagine returning home, but the doors are closed to them. Believe that sacrificing themselves to war is the only way of keeping their loved ones at home safe.
• Thinking about their death in the icy bleak trenches.

Question 2

Form

Answer 2

• Present tense
• First person plural (our, we, us)
• Collective voice shows how the experience was shared by soliders.
• Each stanzas has a regular rhyme scheme (ABBAC), reflecting the monotonous nature of men’s experiences.
• Half rhynes.
• Rhyme scheme offers no comfort or satisfaction.
• Rhymes are jagged like reality of men’s experiences, reflect their confusion and fading energy.
• Each stanza ends with a half line, gap mirrors lack of activity or hope for men.

Question 3

Structure

Answer 3

• Eight stanzas.
• No deal progression.
• Last stanza ends with the same words as the first one, reflecting the monotony of life in the trenches and absence of change.

Question 4

Questions

Answer 4

• Rhetorical questions ask why men are exposed to such dreadful conditions.
• Is there any point to their suffering.

Question 5

Bleak language

Answer 5

• Includes bleak imagery to remind the reader of the men’s lain, awful weather and lack of hope.
• Assonance, onomatopoeia and carefully chosen verbs add to the bleak mood and make the descriptions vivid and distressing.

Question 6

Personification

Answer 6

-Nature is repeatedly personified, making it seem the real enemy.

Question 7

Attitudes and feelings: suffering

Answer 7

Reminder of the real, physical lain that the soldiers experience as well as exhaustion and fatigue. Thinking about home is painful for the men as they’re not welcome there.

Question 8

Attitudes and feelings: boredom

Answer 8

Sense of frustration at their situation, they are worried, watching and waiting, nothing happens. men left to contemplate own deaths.

Question 9

Attitudes and feelings: hopelessness

Answer 9

Soldiers are helpless again power of nature, nothing they can do to change their situation. Poem offers little hope of a future.