Exposure-Wildred Owen Flashcards
Explain some context points of ‘Exposure’
Wilfred Owen was a soldier and office in WW1. He died before the end of the war but during his time he saw the full horror of conditions on the front line. He wrote a number of poems about this, published after the war with the help from fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon
The war its self is often criticised because of a huge loss of life for very little gain. During the Somme over 60,000 British soldiers died in one day and in all day only gain 6 miles by the end of the war. Owens poem is often angry that the soldiers were in muddy dangerous trenches while the generals behind the lines were living in comfort. Owens poems try to show the truth of conditions to people back home. He was not against fighting but was angry about the condition soldiers had to live with in order to do so
Explain the themes in ‘Exposure’
The poem itself is based on war and so links to conflict. The poem is about the weather and conditions of living in the trenches rather than any fighting. It is more a poem about the conflict between man and nature. This is extremely relevant because man has created machines that can launch explosive shells from miles destroy the landscape, and yet nature can still do more harm than any of it
Explain the structure of ‘Exposure’
The poem uses a large amount of ellipses caesuras and repetition to create an on-going sense of waiting and boredom. The poem is made of eight stanzas with a consistent use of a half line to end. This reinforces the sense of stasis or sameness throughout the poem that nothing is happening. There is use of para-rhyme showing words which appear to rhyme yet sound wrong when read to create a sense of unsettledness in the poem the soldiers are feeling. Owen also uses a huge amount of onomatopoeia and alliteration in the poem to emphasise the atmosphere and the sound of weather.
The poem is written in the present tense using the first person plural. This collective voice shows how the experience was shared by soldiers across the war. Each stanza has a regular rhyme scheme reflecting the monotonous nature of the men’s experience. The rhymes are often half rhymes. The rhyme scheme offers no comfort or satisfaction the rhyme is a jagged like the reality of the men’s experience reflect their confusion and fading energy. Each stanza ends with a half line leaving a gap which means the lack of activity or hope for the men.
The poem has eight standards but there is no real progression. The last stanza ends with the same words as the first one reflecting the montonous life in the trenches in the absence of change
Explain other elements of ‘Exposure’
Questions-The poem uses rhetorical questions to ask why the men are exposed to such dreadful conditions and whether there’s any point their suffering
Bleak language – the poem uses lots of bleak imagery to remind the reader of the men’s pain, the awful weather and the lack of hope for the soldiers. Assonance and onomatopoeia and carefully chosen verbs add to the bleak mood and make the descriptions vivid and distressing
Personification-nature is repeatedly personified making it seem the real enemy in the war
What are the feelings and attitudes of ‘Exposure’
Suffering- there are reminders of the real physical pain that the soldier’s 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 the situation. The poem offers little hope of a future for the men
Explain man v nature in ‘Exposure’
Written about soldiers in the trench we expect to see a large amount of military language, however most of this is used to describe and personify the weather is it if it were and all me attacking them. The poem ends with the fear of tonight and the people who will lose lives and how none of this will change anything. In the poem it is the weather that is represented as merciless and triumphant
Summarise the key points in ‘Exposure’
The poem defines the convection of war and looks at the weather assaulting the soldiers,not another army. This is to highlight the unknown horrors of war to people at home
The poet uses repetition and a consistent structure to create the static tone of the poem. The lack of charge adds to the tone of despair
The alliteration is used to create a sense of atmosphere to the weather and to draw parallels to the violence of war and weather
“Our brains ache in the iced east winds that knife us” “dawn masses in the east, its melancholy army”
The vocabulary used has a semantic field of war. The fact that these words have been used to describe the weather is ironic as despite the fact that man creates shells,bombs and other highly destructive weapons, it is the weather that causes the most harm to the soldiers in the trenches
“But nothing happens”
The repetition of this phrase reflects how the soldiers are frozen in a living hell. They feel as if time has paused. This feeling of waiting for something to happen but never does is supported by lots of ellipses
“We cringe in holes”
The animalisation of the soldiers, linked to scared rabbits in holes, shows that before nature man is just a cowardly animal
“All their eyes are ice, But nothing happens”
Metaphor ice as in cols and dead but also dead and empty without soul. Metaphor is a vivid description of how they’ve been overpowered by nature. Men are no longer allowed to feel any emotion.
The repetition on the final line emphasises how the process doesn’t end. The soldiers are frozen in time and hell.
