Exposure

Question 1

“What are we doing here?”
“Is it that we are dying?”

Use of rhetorical questions

Answer 1

RQ asks what the point of this is - asking if there is a point to their suffering in the horrible weather

Second question possibly answering the first, as if throughout the poem, the speaker has come to a realisation that they’re going to die here

Question 2

“Black with snow”
“Ranks of grey”

Semantic field of loss of hope (bleak language)

Answer 2

Reminds the reader of the men’s pain - awful weather = lack of hope

No colour - battlefield is cold and lifeless, creates a bleak mood through making the descriptions vivid and distressing

Question 3

“Iced east winds that knive us”

Personification of the weather

Answer 3

Nature is constantly personified
Seems to be attacking them
Makes weather seem as the real enemy in the war

Question 4

To be compared with:
POWER OF NATURE:
- charge of the light brigade
- storm on the island

Answer 4

To be compared with:
LOSS:
- London