English Literature: poems - Exposure

“exposure” - in the title

the audience being exposed to the harsh realities of war

the ABBAC rhyme and the 5 line stanzas

• suggests the monotony of war

• never ending nature of war

• mirrors the on going boredom and misery of the soldiers

“we” and “us” and “our”

hints towards the collective suffering of the soldiers in WW1

“but nothing happens”

• repetition throught the poem gives the reader the same feeling of boredom the soldier has as they slowly await their deaths

• hints towards the pointlessness of war - waste of time

“our brains ache as the merciless iced east winds knive us”

• personification and sibilance

• the weather is personified to make it sound menacing and deadly, characterising the weather as the real enemy of the soldiers

“dawn massing in the east her melancholy army/attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey”

• personification

• dawn is usually associated with light and hope, however her it represents hostility and brings even more suffering

• colour imagery

• “grey” conveys despair and boredom

• military voacbulary

• “ranks” is repeated to remind the audience of the repeating enemy of the soldiers - the weather

“less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow”

• nature is represented as more deadly than bullets

• personification

• “black” and “snow” contrast is unsettling as they juxtapose each other and expose the horror of being left alone in the elements

“slowly our ghosts drag us home”

• metaphor

• suggesting the war has removed the life from the soldiers, the soldiers are on the brink of death

“all their eyes are ice”

• metaphor

• describes the extreme effects of the weather that have overcome the soldiers

• implies the soldiers have lost their humanity and they are close to breaking point

• owen does this to highlight the loss of identity war gives people as it take the life out of their life

how does remains link to exposure

• “on another occasion” - the soldier has lost feeling because of the effect of the war

• “his bloody life in my bloody hand” - shows the mental struggle of the soldiers not just physical as this has led to the loss of life because of the lasting effects war has - links to macbeth

• “tosses his guts back into his body” - shows the carelessness of the soldiers as they have realised there is no way out of the impact of modern warfare