exposure - wilfred owen

Question 1

what does the title indicate, and what is the poem about?

Answer 1

• speaker is exposed
• exposes the realities of war

highlights irony that soldiers are dying from weather rather than combat

helplessness, despair, misery

Question 2

‘in the merciless ices winds that knive us’

Answer 2

• relentless
• constant
• uncomfort

Question 3

‘what are we doing here?’

Answer 3

• seems pointless
• inconvenience
• questions existence
• regretful, doubtful

Question 4

‘the poignant misery of dawn begins to grow’

Answer 4

• refuses to live like this

- depressing

Question 5

‘less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow’

Answer 5

• scared of weather rather than gunfire
• gory, deathly, dirty
• dangerous conditions

Question 6

‘forgotten dreams, and stare, snow dazed’

Answer 6

• lacks aspiration to escape
• no ambition
• sees no future
• institutionalised

Question 7

‘on us the doors are closed’

Answer 7

• shut out
• even living has given up on them
• cannot turn back

Question 8

‘for the love of God seems dying’

Answer 8

• if God can’t save them, who can?
• unreliable
• loses faith in all

Question 9

‘pause over half known faces’

Answer 9

• forgotten
• half loved
• crowded, too many to remember
• die without dignity

Question 10

personification - ‘frost will fasten’

Answer 10

• hard to reverse

- hold them securely

Question 11

personification - ‘puckering’

Answer 11

• moulds, manipulates

Question 12

imagery - ‘on this mud and us’

Answer 12

• closes them, buries them

- they deserve to die with honour

Question 13

metaphor - ‘shrivelling many hands’

Answer 13

• disforms them

Question 14

zoom - ‘many’

Answer 14

• powerful

- genocidal connotations, mass destruction

Question 15

repeated use of pronouns ‘our’ and ‘we’

Answer 15

• situation he was a part of

- collective suffering

Question 16

repetition of ‘but nothing happens’

Answer 16

• agony of waiting
• war is not all about action
• deaths are inevitable
• unsettling to readers

Question 17

what are the main themes through the poem?

Answer 17

war - looks at a particular aspect of how death claimed the lives of so many soldiers. soldiers cannot predict what is to happen.

weather - freezing conditions are seen more threatening than the enemies. the soldiers are fighting two battles at once, but the bullets are seen as less deadly of the two.

despair - loss in faith, not looking forward to any after life once death has occurred, that there is no ‘better place’ with God

Question 18

how does wilfred owen show that the soldiers are doomed?

Answer 18

• noise of war is constantly in the background, a reminder that the soldiers could die any moment
• weather has turned against them, and may kill quicker than the bullets
• despair suggests they have nothing left to live for

Question 19

‘our brains ache’

Answer 19

physical pain - noise and cold winds gave them headaches

developing psychological problems - noise and terror has cause shell shock

Question 20

‘we cringe in holes’

Answer 20

frightened - small, scared behaviours of animal

ordinary men - scared as they should be, no reason to be courageous in times of uncertainty

Question 21

what language does wilfred owen use?

Answer 21

he rhymes on hard consonant sounds ‘knive us’ and ‘nervous’, ‘silent’ and ‘salient’, making the atmosphere unsettling