POETRY | Exposure

Question 1

Context:

Answer 1

• Owen initially pursued a career in the church, but felt it was hypocritical.
• He became a soldier and was killed in battle before the armistice in 1918.
• War poetry was a new form at the time, with no major war in over 100 years.
• Owen’s inspiration came from John Keats and Siegfried Sassoon.
• Sassoon mentored Owen during his shellshock.
• Owen’s poem, written in 1917, was written by an actual soldier in the trenches, creating an authentic first-person narrative.
• Owen dispelled the mythical status of war by exposing its horrific reality.

Question 2

Form:

Answer 2

• Consistency of rhyme scheme emphasizes message.
• Regular stanzas reflect monotony of war.
• Rich imagery builds throughout stanza.
• Anti-climax mirrors constant alertness of soldiers.
• Emphasizes futility of war.
• Owen creates unease atmosphere through pararhyme between “winds that knife us” and “curious, nervous”.
• Rhyming consonants only leaves reader unsatisfied, mirroring soldiers’ unease.
• Unconventional use of rhyming creates impression that poem is just coping, similar to soldiers’ anticipation of battle.

Question 3

“slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires”

Structure: Hughes employs a chaotic structure in his poem to mirror the chaos and panic of war.

Answer 3

• Caesura in “slowly our
  ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires”
• Uses colon to separate home from trenches.
• Depicts soldiers imagining warmth of homes.
• Barrier between home and trenches, soldiers fighting in cold.
• Emphasizes futility of war.
• Repetition of “but nothing happens” connects end and beginning (cyclical structure)
• Situation remains unchanged despite suffering.
• Reader questions “what are we doing here?”
• Owens’ poem interpreted as a critique against unnecessary wars and poor leadership.

Question 4

“sudden sucessive flights of bullets streak the silence”

Answer 4

• Sibilance “sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence”
• Sibilant consonants mirror gunfire sound, indicating snow as the real threat.
• Breaks silence, indicating the battle is with nature, not opposition.
• Snowfall is an immediate threat, not a rumor of war.
• Sibilance’s serpent-like connotations perpetuate sinister atmosphere.

Question 5

“dawn massing in the east, her melancholy army”

“like a dull rumour of some other war”

Answer 5

• Nature symbolizes the antagonist, suggesting it’s a larger threat than the actual enemy.
• In “dawn massing in the east her melancholy army”,
• Owen juxtaposes the nurturing role of a female nature figure with the aggressive connotations of an army.
• Owen minimizes the significance of the actual battle, comparing it to the deathless air that shudders black with snow.
• The ongoing battle is presented as insignificant through auditory imagery, in “gunnery rumbles” and “like a dull rumour of some other war”.