Exposure Flashcards
What is the structure of exposure?
Half rhyme - tight structure, war discipline, and that the soldiers might be giving up.
8 stanzas - strict routine and boredom.
Shifts focus from the men to their dreams and beliefs.
The monotonous presentation of the structure represents the tedium of life in the trenches.
Repetition of the refrain “But nothing happens”.
Lots of caesura slows everything down which drags out the suffering and boredom.
What is the meaning of Exposure?
Futility of war, waste of time.
War is repetitive and boring, the reality is that many men died from exposure to the weather rather than the war itself.
Key quotes to remember in Exposure?
“Merciless iced east winds that knive us”
“But nothing happens”
“Massing” “Army” “Attack’s” “Ranks” - semantic field of nature being personified as an army.
“Less deadly than the air”.
Who wrote Exposure?
Wilfred Owen
What is the semantic field of nature being personified as an army in Exposure?
massing
army
attacks
ranks.
“like twitching agonies of men among its brambles”
Exposure
Liked barbed wire, comparison between nature’s damage and war.
“sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence. Less deadly than the air”.
Exposure.
The power of the weather.
“Slowly our ghosts drag home”
Exposure
War has changed them, killed their souls.
Quotes for imagery in Exposure?
“All their eyes are ice” - figuratively dead, emotionless.
