Exposure

Who is "Exposure" written by?

Wilfred Owen

What is the context of Exposure?

• Originally, Owen pursued a career in the church however, he felt it was hypocritical as it failed in its duty to care for its dependants. He became a soldier and was killed in battle one week before the armistice in 1918. He suffered from shellshock in hospital and was advised to write about his experiences in his poetry, so his work expresses the true horror of war rather than him internalising it

• The winter of 1917 was particularly cold and many soldiers suffered from hypothermia, frostbite and trench foot. Owen believed war was meaningless and futile

What is the structure of Exposure?

• Cyclical structure and regular rhyme scheme - reflecting the monotony of life in the trenches and the absence of change

• Rhyme scheme offers no comfort or satisfaction - the rhymes are jagged like the reality of the men’s experiences and reflect their confusion and fading energy

• Each stanza ends with a half line, leaving a gap which mirrors the lack of activity or hope for the men

• Written in first person plural (e.g. “Our”, “We”, “us”) which shows how the collective experience was shared by soldiers across the war

What other poems can you compare “Exposure” to?

• Bayonet Charge (Reality of war)

• Storm on the Island (Power of nature)

• London (Loss of hope)

"Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us…"

• This is a shared, painful experience. Nature is personified in a sinister way to be the enemy and seems to be attacking them.

• Personification is also used to create a sense of fear in the reader

• Ellipsis hint that they’re waiting for something to happen - it never does (anti-climactic; implies hopelessness)

"Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles"

The “brambles” of the barbed wire reminds us of the pain caused by nature and the turmoil of the soldiers’ trauma and agitation. Graphic imagery - this is an uncomfortable image to hear and imagine

"Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army"

“Dawn” is personified using the language of battle. Normally, dawn brings hope, but not here. “her melancholy army” connotes mother nature and the adjective “melancholy” means deep sadness which suggests the speaker’s disillusionment with war

“black with snow…flowing flakes that flock”

• Snow is usually white (symbolising purity), but here it’s black (symbolising evil or death). The alliteration emphasises the relentlessness and merciless nature of the snow

• “black with snow” could also be the shot from the guns and explosions. These man-made things have ‘put a bullet through mother nature’, making her angry and she is now showing her wrath through the lethal cold weather.

• The snow may be viewed as a kind and gentle side of the weather that, the soldiers might have believed, had been sent by God. This would add a sense of irony — they are not killed by the acts of war but God’s power

• The use of assonance with the ‘f’ sounds in the verse give the snow a gentle quality. Combining this with the use of the militaristic semantic field could inhibit the interpretation that the snow is simply following orders from a higher being, be that of God or simply the weather as a greater power. This links back to the soldiers fate, as they are forced to fight by their commanders, therefore emphasising the futile war efforts by implying that both forces are reluctant to fight.

"For love of God seems dying"

• Could mean that their love of God is disappearing, or that they feel God’s love for them is dying. This religious reference implies that there is a lack of religiously imposed morality remaining in the situation - highlighting the cruelty of it

• Owen rejected a career in the church as he felt like it failed to care for its dependents; suggests the feeling of abandonment

• The speaker is questioning his motivation to fight, he asks what the point of it all is; the men are left to contemplate their own deaths

"All their eyes are ice"

• This could refer to the dead soldiers, whose eyes may be literally frozen in the cold, or it could refer to the burying-party, which is so used to death that its soldiers are numb. Their eyes are glazed and icy, too shocked to convey emotion.

• Furthermore, the use of ‘their’ separates the narrator from his comrades, contrasting with the earlier use of personal pronouns, ‘us’ and ‘we’. This could suggest that the earlier sense of unity has been lost now that they are dead.

• The bible states, “If a blind man leads a blind man both will fall into a pit”. The government, oblivious to the true, unbearable pains of war, is leading the men with “eyes of ice”