Poem - Exposure

Question 1

Our brains ache

Answer 1

Stanza 1: Talking about the mental strain of war

Question 2

Silence, sentries, whisper

Answer 2

Stanza 1: Sibilence

Question 3

But nothing happens

Answer 3

Stanza 1: “But nothing happens” is referring to the war This is parallelism. However, throughout the poem, he suggests that the weather is always changing. This adds another difference between the war and nature.

Question 4

Like a dull rumour of some other war

Answer 4

Stanza 2: The war doesn’t seem real

Question 5

poignant misery of dawn

Answer 5

Stanza 3: Normally, dawn is a happy event, ‘singing birds’, but war makes it miserable. Also dawn is cyclical and repetitive, it always happens, like the war.

Question 6

War lasts, rain soaks and clouds sag stormy

Answer 6

Stanza 3: This tricolon is about the weather and war that lasts. Weather is always happening, like this war.

Question 7

Sudden successive flights of bullets

Answer 7

Stanza 4: Sibilence

Question 8

Air that shudders

Answer 8

Stanza 4: Personification

Question 9

We watch them [snowflakes]

Answer 9

Stanza 4: instead of fighting they watch the snowflakes. They don’t want to fight.

Question 10

Flowing flakes that flock

Answer 10

Stanza 4: Alliteration

Question 11

[The Snowflakes] renew

Answer 11

Stanza 4: the snowflakes can be renewed, unlike the lives lost during the fighting. This suggests nature is against war

Question 12

The wind’s nonchalance

Answer 12

Stanza 4: nonchalance means uncaring. Could be about how the soldiers have a nonchalant attitude to the war

Question 13

We watch them [snowflakes] wandering

Answer 13

Stanza 4: wandering = aimless. Parallelism with aimless war

Question 14

[the snowflakes] come feeling for our face

Answer 14

Stanza 5: Nature can walk all over them, the soldiers are very weak comparably. Another suggestion that nature is against war.

Question 15

Slowly our ghosts drag home

Answer 15

Stanza 6: Like they are forced to go home. A part of them have died out there and only their ghosts remain.

Question 16

Mice rejoice: the house is theirs; Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed.

Answer 16

Stanza 7: people have become more primitive than mice because of participation in the war.

Question 17

What is Caesurae?

Answer 17

Punctuation in the middle of a line of poetry

Question 18

All their eyes are ice

Answer 18

Stanza 8: Nobody is warm and welcoming, almost dead

Question 19

God seems dying

Answer 19

Stanza 7: He is starting to question his faith.

Question 20

A quote that shows the pain felt by the soldiers

Answer 20

Winds that knive us

Question 21

A quote that shows how windy it was, but also the hatred of the enemy in the east (Germany)

Answer 21

Iced east winds

Question 22

A quote that shows how the war is driving the soldiers insane

Answer 22

Mad gusts

Question 23

An adjective that highlights the tedium of the war

Answer 23

Silence

Question 24

Another quote that shows the loss of faith from the soldiers

Answer 24

We believe not

Question 25

What structure creates a sombre mood in the poem?

Answer 25

Rhymes and para-rhymes give a tight shape to the stanzas.

Question 26

What are the 2 things the poems title refer to?

Answer 26

Exposure to the cold

Exposure of the myth that fighting in the war was exciting and glamorous