Poetry - Exposure by Wilfred Owen

Question 1

Why does Owen use collective pronouns?

Answer 1

Collective pronouns are used to show a sense of unity and of collective struggle between all of the soldiers all over the battle field.

Question 2

What technique is used in describing the weather? Why?

Answer 2

Personification because it shows that the soldiers biggest enemy was not the other side but the weather and the environmental conditions

Question 3

what is the line repeated 4 times?

Answer 3

“but nothing happens.”

Question 4

What techniques are used in the line “flowing flakes that flock”?

Answer 4

Fricative

Question 5

What are the main themes in Exposure?

Answer 5

Psychological distress, inner conflict, physical conflict, war and the weather

Question 6

How was the weather their greatest enemy?

Answer 6

Hypothermia, snow, rain and ice

Question 7

What is the rhyming scheme?

Answer 7

First 4 stanzas are ABAB
The rest uses half rhymes

Question 8

What techniques are used throughout the poem?

Answer 8

Personification, sibilance, assonance, Rhyming scheme and repetition

Question 9

What is Assonance? Where is it used?

Answer 9

The resemblance of sound between syllables of nearby words
“…dawn begins to grow…
We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.”

Question 10

Where are rhetorical question used and why?

Answer 10

They are used at the ends of stanzas 2 & 5.
This is to question the validity of the war and why we the soldiers are fighting.