exposure - wilfred owen Flashcards
what does the title indicate, and what is the poem about?
- speaker is exposed
- exposes the realities of war
highlights irony that soldiers are dying from weather rather than combat
helplessness, despair, misery
‘in the merciless ices winds that knive us’
- relentless
- constant
- uncomfort
‘what are we doing here?’
- seems pointless
- inconvenience
- questions existence
- regretful, doubtful
‘the poignant misery of dawn begins to grow’
- refuses to live like this
- depressing
‘less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow’
- scared of weather rather than gunfire
- gory, deathly, dirty
- dangerous conditions
‘forgotten dreams, and stare, snow dazed’
- lacks aspiration to escape
- no ambition
- sees no future
- institutionalised
‘on us the doors are closed’
- shut out
- even living has given up on them
- cannot turn back
‘for the love of God seems dying’
- if God can’t save them, who can?
- unreliable
- loses faith in all
‘pause over half known faces’
- forgotten
- half loved
- crowded, too many to remember
- die without dignity
personification - ‘frost will fasten’
- hard to reverse
- hold them securely
personification - ‘puckering’
- moulds, manipulates
imagery - ‘on this mud and us’
- closes them, buries them
- they deserve to die with honour
metaphor - ‘shrivelling many hands’
- disforms them
zoom - ‘many’
- powerful
- genocidal connotations, mass destruction
repeated use of pronouns ‘our’ and ‘we’
- situation he was a part of
- collective suffering
repetition of ‘but nothing happens’
- agony of waiting
- war is not all about action
- deaths are inevitable
- unsettling to readers
what are the main themes through the poem?
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
how does wilfred owen show that the soldiers are doomed?
- 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
‘our brains ache’
physical pain - noise and cold winds gave them headaches
developing psychological problems - noise and terror has cause shell shock
‘we cringe in holes’
frightened - small, scared behaviours of animal
ordinary men - scared as they should be, no reason to be courageous in times of uncertainty
what language does wilfred owen use?
he rhymes on hard consonant sounds ‘knive us’ and ‘nervous’, ‘silent’ and ‘salient’, making the atmosphere unsettling
