exposure

“wearied we”

• links to themes: WAR AND CONFLICT

• use of alliteration increases the difficulty of pronouncing the sentence, alluding to the difficulty of the soldiers’ lives during conflict

“war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds say stormy”

• links to themes: POWER OF NATURE, WAR AND CONFLICT

• vivid optical imagery surrounding the weather links to the lasting effect violent conflict has; permeating the earth with blood spilt

“snow-dazed … sun-dozed”

• links to themes: POWER OF NATURE, WAR AND CONFLICT

• Antithesis within nature connotes the psyche of the soldiers - conflicted over survival vs patriotism

• The reference to the two dichotomous seasons in the compound words demonstrates the loss of time war causes, how the soldiers become a shell of themselves

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

• links to themes: WAR AND CONFLICT

• The caesura highlights the physiological barriers holding soldiers from truly returning home

“but nothing happens”

• links to themes: WAR AND CONFLICT

• Anti-climax

• Repeated epistrophe of "happens"

• Emphasises the paranoia and psychological trauma war induces, despite no events taking place

AO3

• written in 1917

• the poem was written whilst Owen was a soldier in the trenches; during WW1

  • 1918 - Owen was killed in battle on week before armistice

• Owen initially pursued a career in the Church, but felt this was hypocritical as the Church failed to care for its dependants

• Owen wrote this poem to dispel the British Victorian illusion of romanticised war, demonstrating the horrors of violent conflict

  • this is seen further in Owen’s other poem: ‘Dulce et Decorum’, which emphasises this anti-conflict perspective

structure

• blank verse

  • consistency of the structure within the blank verse emphasises the monotony of war

• cyclical structure

  • emphasises the monotony and prolonged nature of conflict