Exposure revision Flashcards
What is the poem about? (exposure)
soldiers in the trenches of world war one are awake at night, afraid of an enemy attack.
but nature seems to be their main enemy-it’s freezing cold, windy and snowing.
What is the form of the poem? (exposure)
the poem is written in present tense using fist person plural (e.g our, we,us) This collective voice shows how the experience was shared by soldiers across the war. Each stanza has a regular rhyme scheme (ABBAC) reflecting the monotonous nature of the men’s experience . but the rhymes are often half-rhythms e.g ‘‘snow’’ and ‘‘renew’’ the rhyme scheme offers no comfort or satisfaction the rhymes are jagged like the reality of the men’s experience and reflecting their confusion and fading energy. Also each stanza ends in a half-line, leaving a gap which mirrors the lack of activity or hope for men.
What is the structure of the poem? (exposure)
The poem has eight stanzas, but there’s no real progression- the last stanza ends with the same words as the first one, reflecting the monotony of life in the trenches and the absence of change.
What are the feelings and attitudes in the poem? (exposure)
Suffering-There are reminders of the real, physical pain that the soldiers experience, as well as their exhaustion and fatigue. Even thinking about home is painful for the men as they’re not welcome there
BOREDOM-there’s a sense of frustration at their situation they are ‘‘worried’’, ‘‘Watching’’ and waiting but ‘‘nothing happens’’ and the men are left to contemplate their own deaths.
HOPELESSNESS- the soldiers are helpless against the power of nature and there is nothing they can do to change their situation.
'’Our brains ache in the ______ iced ____ winds that knife us… _____ we keep awake because the night is _________…’’
'’Our brains ache in the merciless iced east winds that knife us… wearied we keep awake because the night is silent…’’
we imagen the danger in war is the enemies but in this poem it is nature, we could look at this with terrible irony that nature itself is attacking the men now perhaps look at this as a reaction from nature turning against the barbaric nature of man and killing them as though nature is part of some divine punishment and if it is it is utterly merciless it is taking no mercy on these men because of the horror of the war they have brought to the land. Owen also convey’s that with the assonance of the repeated I’s so in and merciless iced winds knife us that assonance slows down the rhythm of the lines and also mimics the exposure that the poet is feeling they’re out there in theses merciless conditions for a long time we can also see that i think in the incredible length of all of the lines all round about 12 or 13 syllables much longer than you’d expect we’re conditioned to finding lines of ten syllables or fewer but Owen draws that out in order to mimic the length of time that these men are being exposed to these terrible conditions which will kill them in this poem now he also challenges us in other ways here so we would expect a silent to be brilliant that would make us sleep but here soldiers keep awake because the night is silent and so what he is suggesting here is that in war everything is turned upside down or expectations no longer work the way they do in real normal life. The silence might suggest that the enemy s getting ready for an attack and wanting therefore to conceal that attack by not being noisy about it he conveys how tiring this effort to stay awake is with the alliteration of the W’s which again draw out time we read we awake it slows down the way that we speak and conveys the long time it is taking for this night to pass.
Pronoun us shows a collective experience
who made the poem exposure?
Wilfred Owen
'’Dawn massing in the east her ________ army attacks once more in _____’s on shivering ranks of _____,’’
'’Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey,’’
This is personification of the clouds coming from the east, we have got this image of the weather now arming itself and actually being better’d armored than the soldiers. The word massing suggests that there is much more danger from the weather than there are from German soldiers. There’s an interesting pathetic fallacy going on here as the weather is melancholy reflecting the emotions of the men is miserably but on another level he’s also suggesting that nature is miserable itself it doesn’t want to attack the men with this army but it’s miserably reluctantly feeling it has to do it as though to expel this great horror of war from nature, the repetition of ranks and ranks and the sound the assonance again of ranks and attacks the sounds use in assonance here suggests that the attack from nature is endless and goes on and on and the soldiers can do nothing about it . again the pathetic fallacy can be found when the actual clouds are shivering which actually conveys the shivering of the soldier on the ground.
'’So we drowse, sun-_____, Littered with _______ trickling where the blackbirds _____- is it that we are dying?’’
'’So we drowse, sun-dozed, Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbirds fusses- is it that we are dying?’’
Owen gives us these images of how the soldiers escaped from this they escaped in their minds. everything we see in the quote is a description of summer but actually theses aren’t random things he’s picking things he can see now so the blossoms that he can see now are actually white and the association of course is with the snow he’s is seeing the flakes of snow come down and imagining them as spring like blossoms the sound of the winds is bringing theses melancholy gray clouds on them and now like the sounds of the blackbird but they’re not pleasant sounds they’re irritating the black bird is fussing away in the hedgerows it’s so in even his summer memory here or his spring memory he’s irritated by that sound just like he is irritated by the winds now we would also associate the idea of blossoms with warmth and beauty but look at how he describes the blossoms as being littered with blossoms that means there would be plenty of them and therefore beautiful but the use of the word littered also suggest this is refuge it’s rubbish it’s a very negative description then we come to this idea of moments of peace and sunshine so we’d drowsed sun dozed we can imagine getting sleepy in the sun which is a lovely pleasant lazy feeling but here getting sleepy is a threat if you fall asleep out in theses harsh cold conditions you will literally freeze to death. The sibilance of so, sun-dozed sounds quite seductive we could say that nature is trying to seduce the solders and make them sleep so they will die that why he says it it that we are dying.
'’But ___________ happens’’
'’But nothing happens’’
conjunction (But) shows the thing they are expecting (enemy soldiers) never come’s
The line is repeated four times-emphasising the torture of waiting they are basically waiting for death one way or another by conflict or nature
-suffering is drawn out long and slow (anti-climatic)
'’Slowly our _____ drag _____’’
'’Slowly our ghosts drag home’’
Word’s slowly and drag shows that they can’t even enjoy their time on leave
their are broken
Metaphor of ghosts show’s they are already dead inside, soulless. The weather has broken them.
suggests they are about to die slowly.
