Exposure

Question 1

What is the structure of the stanzas?

Answer 1

3 part structure:

1) a blunt and powerful sentence
2) highly emotive vocabulary choices
3) ends on an anticlimax

Question 2

What is the rhyme scheme?

Answer 2

ABBAC

Question 3

What is the overall structure?

Answer 3

First 5 verses is the description of the trench. The next verse is dreaming of home, The next verse is a philosophical reflection and the final verse is back in the trench

Question 4

What is the blunt and powerful first sentence?

Answer 4

‘Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us”

Question 5

What is this kind of rhyme called? “Knive us, nervous” “silent, salient”

Answer 5

Near rhyme/parahrhyme

Question 6

What does the poem exposure focus on?

Answer 6

The misery felt by ww1 soldiers waiting overnight in the trenches. As there is still danger because they are exposed to the extreme cold

Question 7

What is the effect of the repeated use of the pronouns “our” and “we”?

Answer 7

It shows that Wilfred Owen was describing a situation he was part of as well as showing how the soldiers shared the horror of war

Question 8

What is the significance of the title?

Answer 8

It shows that the soldiers were exposed to the natural elements and that Wilfred Owen was trying to expose how bad war was

Question 9

What is the effect of repeating the phrase “But nothing happens”

Answer 9

It shows that war is all about waiting and by the end of the poem there is a sense of hopelessness where the soldiers see their deaths as inevitable

Question 10

How is the theme of war presented?

Answer 10

He wants to Show the pity of war “we only know that war lasts”

Question 11

How is the theme of weather presented?

Answer 11

The freezing conditions are seen as being the most dangerous enemy. The soldiers are fighting two battles at once and at some points the bullets are seen as less deadly than the weather “dawn massing in the east her melancholy army attacks once more in ranks of grey”

Question 12

How is the theme of despair presented?

Answer 12

Death is seen as inevitable. The soldiers lose faith in their war and in god “for love of God seems dying”

Question 13

How does Owen show that the soldiers are doomed?

Answer 13

The noise of war is constantly in the background (incessantly the flickering gunnery rumbles) reminding the soldiers they could die at any moment

Even the weather has turned against them

The soldiers sense of despair suggests they have nothing left to.live for

Question 14

Interpret the line “our brains ache”

Answer 14

The guns are noisy and give the soldiers a headache or they are developing phycological problems

Question 15

Interpret the line on us the doors are closed

Answer 15

All the doors are closed on the soldiers. They feel they will never make it back home

Question 16

How is the last line of each stanza shown to be important?

Answer 16

It is very short and they are either rhetorical questions or the phrase and nothing happens emphasising the pointlessness of war

Question 17

Owen uses half rhyme what is the significance of this?

Answer 17

It helps to unsettle the reader and doesn’t give them their expected ending which echoes the experience of war

Question 18

Give an example of silbelance and day what it does

Answer 18

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence

It reminds the reader of the bullets which are whizzing past the ears of the soldiers

Question 19

There is assonance in the third verse with the sound of a long o in the words know soak and grow

Answer 19

It emphasises the long tedious wait for war

Question 20

What is the context of the poem?

Answer 20

Ww1 began in 1914 and was predicted it would end swiftly. The winter of 1917 had extreme cold weather. Owen and his fellow soldiers were forced to lie outside in freezing conditions for two days. Owen was hospitalised for shell shock in 1917.

Question 21

Give an overview of the poem

Answer 21

It explores two different aspects. The war itself and the conditions they are expected to survive in. It is a first person perspective based on direct experience

Question 22

What sort of language does Owen use?

Answer 22

Emotive language to draw in the reader and make them part of the experience