form

rhyme scheme

• The consistency of the rhyme scheme allows the fifth line to stand out, emphasising it’s message. the consistency of the rhyme scheme shows the monotony of war.

• Owen builds rich imagery throughout the stanza and then the simple fifth line creates an anti-climax. This mirrors the way in which the soldiers must stay constantly alert, yet nothing ever happens. This highlights the futility of war

pararhymes

• Owen creates an underlying atmosphere of unease through the pararhyme between “winds that knife us” and “curious, nervous”. By only rhyming the consonants, Owen leaves the reader feeling unsatisfied to mirror the soldiers’ feelings of unease. The reader is left anticipating a rhyme the same way the soldiers are on edge anticipating a battle.

• This unconventional use of rhyming creates the impression that the poem is only being kept together, just like the soldiers are only just coping.

structure

cyclical structure

• The last line of the first and last stanza is “but nothing happens” which connects the end and the beginning of the poem to emphasise the fact that nothing has happened in that time

anaphora

• The speaker repeats “but nothing happens” to emphasise the futility of war. the situation remains the same despite their suffering so they aren’t achieving anything. this leads the speaker to question “what are we doing here?”. It is often interpreted that Owens wasn’t objecting to war itself but against unnecessary wars and poor leadership

caesura

• Owen uses punctuation to separate home from the trenches. the colon used in “slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires” depicts the soldiers to be imagining the warmth of their homes. Yet there is a barrier between the two places as they cannot return and must instead stay and fight in the cold

ellipses

• the first three lines end with ellipses to emphasise the waiting and boredom of the soldiers. Owen’s use of ellipses slows the pace of the poem to force the reader to experience the same frustration as the soldiers due to their suffering being stretched out with time.

language

religious references

• Owen presents the soldiers to be carrying out their moral duty to protect the innocent people at home; the speaker says “for love of God seems dying”. Owen uses a contemporary listener’s association if Christianity with morality to show the soldiers’ selflessness. This can be tied to the idea of Jesus suffering and dying to save humanity. A similar sense of acceptance of death is shown “we turn our back to dying”.

• The poem could also be interpreted to show the soldiers losing their love for God. Their faith is “dying” as it is difficult to reconcile the theory of a benevolent God with the reality of conflict. This links to Owen’s short career in the church resulting in his view of it being hypocritical.

sibilance

• sibilance is used in “sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence” to position nature as the enemy. this sibilant consonants mirror the sound of gunfire which shows the reader that the snow us the real threat as snowflakes slice through the air in the same way as bullets. This breaks the silence previously described.

• It appears the battle the soldiers were waiting for is not with the opposition but with nature instead. The snowfall is not the “dull rumour of some other war”, it is an immaculate threat. The sinister atmosphere is perpetuated by the serpent like connotations of the sibilance used.

personification of nature

• Nature symbolises the antagonist throughout the poem to imply that nature is an even bigger threat than the actual enemy.

• In “dawn massing in the east her melancholy army”, Owen juxtaposes the nurturing role traditionally associated with a female nature figure with the aggressive connotations of an army

• Simultaneously, Owen minimises the significance of the actual fighting occurring. He makes a direct comparison by describing the actual battle as “less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow” which, through the deathlike connotations of the colour black, ironically suggests that the soldiers have gone away to fight with nature instead of the opposition

• The ongoing battle is further presented to be insignificant through Owen’s use of auditory imagery in “gunnery rumbles” and “like a dull rumour of some other war”

  reality of war

reality of war

boredom

• The passage of time is represented by the description of the season changing from “snow-dazed” to “sun-dosed” with “blossoms” and “blackbird fusses”. This shows how long they are in the trenches for just waiting.

soldiers are forgotten

• Owen often conveys the despondency felt by the soldiers who believe that they are being forgotten. The metaphor “on us the doors are closed” implies that as those at home in safety carry on with life as normal, they forget about the soldiers dying for them.

• Owen laments the military leaders’ view of soldiers as dispensable by depicting the soldiers as indistinguishable from mud in “this frost will fasten on this mud and us”

suffering

• Owen’s description of the environment is indicative of an individual in a great deal of pain. He negatively personifies the wind as “mad gusts tugging on the wire like twitching agonies” and the wire is referred to as “brambles”

fear

• The soldiers are unable to sleep due to their fear driven constant state of alertness. The speaker states that “wearied, we stay awake because the night is silent” as if they are scared to sleep even though “ nothing happens”

• The second there is a lapse in their concentration, the “dull rumour of some other war” poses a threat.