Exposure - Power + Conflict Poetry

Question 1

‘us’ and ‘our’

Answer 1

First person plurals - show unity between the soldiers and that the suffering described includes the narrator.

Question 2

‘ranks on shivering ranks of grey’

Answer 2

Personification of dawn - portrayed as a commander assembling an army of clouds to assault the soldiers. This shows the ferocity and relentlessness of danger.

Question 3

‘the merciless iced east winds that knive us’

Answer 3

Personification / Sibilance - biting wind attacking the men like an enemy. The cold stabs at them and penetrates their skin.

Question 4

‘We hear mad gusts tugging on the wire, / Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.’

Answer 4

Simile - comparison to the switching agonies of men bending and contorting. Imagery of soldiers caught up in the wire.

Question 5

‘Less deathly than the air that shudders black with snow’

Answer 5

Symbolism - Snow is normally white (symbolising purity), but here it is black. Black skies have sinister connotations and symbolise death or a lack of hope.

Question 6

‘All their eyes are ice’

Answer 6

Metaphor - refers to the eyes of the living and the dead men - it is a vivid description of how they’ve been overpowered by nature. Also hints that the living men are no longer able to feel any emotion.

Question 7

‘Slowly our ghosts drag home’

Answer 7

Assonance - assonance of the prolonged ‘oh’ sound make the imagined journey sound painful and slow.

Question 8

‘knive us…’
‘silent…’
‘salient…’

Answer 8

Ellipsis - hint that they’re waiting for something to happen and it never does. Tail of gradually, symbolises the many hours the men spent waiting.

Question 9

‘Knive us’ and ‘Nervous’ or
‘brambles’ and ‘rumbles’

Answer 9

Half rhyme - creates a sense of discord and disquiet. The rhyme scheme offers no comfort or satisfaction - the rhymes are jagged like the reality of the men’s experience and reflect their confusion and fading energy.

Question 10

‘Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are all closed.’

Answer 10

Caesura - in this stanza caesura create a divide between each line, which reflects how the men are shut out of their homes. This also reflects the soldiers concern that people back home were loosing interest in their fate as the war dragged on.