Exposure - Wilfred Owen Flashcards
CONTEXT - Who did Wilfred Owen meet to inspire him to write of his experiences?
Seigfried Sassoon
CONTEXT - Why was this published after his death in WWI?
Because censorship was there - poems about shell-shock such as these would have made soldiers uneasy and difficult to recruit people
What is the first line of the poem?
“Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us…”
Describe the rhyming pattern
ABBA. This is more definitive at the start (“us, silent, salient, nervous”), But in the second half there are more half rhymes (“burn, fruit, afraid, born”). This insinuates how he is losing life & energy, as they’re dying.
What is the last line of the poem? What does this suggest?
“But nothing happens”
1 - too numb from cold to feel emotional or physical pain
2 - insignificant in the context of war/ no one cares about them
IN line 39, what is there about a heirarchy?
“Tonight, His frost will fasten on this mud and us”
Hierarchy of God, mud, us
1 - least important
2 - “and” makes “us” afterwards seem like an after though - not cared for
What are the last lines of each paragraph?
"But noting happens" "What are we doing here?" "But noting happens" "But noting happens" "- Is it that we are dying?" "We turn back to our dying" "For love of God seems dying" "But noting happens"
Where is sibilance used? How does this contrast to the fricative alliteration?
“Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence” - makes it sound pleasant compared to the fricative alliteration of “flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew” - So death by bullets is preferred more to cold weather
How does Wilfred Owen present the idea that nature is reclaiming the soldiers?
“We cringe in holes”
“Deep into grassier ditches”
“Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses”
“The buryig-party, picks and shovels” - having to destroy the ground to free the soldiers to get them out - nature has a strong hold on them
