Exposure

?
  • Created by: saiki_ho
  • Created on: 15-04-18 06:08

Introduction

  • Explores soldiers experiencing harsh conditions of nature while battling through a violent war

  • Present nature as being more powerful and permanent than humans

1 of 12

Context

Wilfred Owen

  • Wrote this poem from the trenches of world war one

    • Had a horrible time

Poem

  • Reveals his anger at the war’s

    • Waste of life

    • Horrific conditions

2 of 12

Form

  • The poem’s written in present tense using first person plural
    • Collective voice shows how the experience was shared by soldiers across the war
  • Each stanza
    • Regular rhyme scheme
      • ABBAC
      • Reflects the monotonous nature of men’s experience
      • Often half rhymes (“snow” & “renew”)
      • Rhymes are jagged like the reality of men’s experience and reflect their confusion and fading energy
    • Ends with a half line
      • Mirrors the lack of activity or hope for men
3 of 12

Structure

  • Eight stanzas

  • No real progression

    • The last stanza ends with the same words as the first one

      • Reflects monotony of life in the trenches and absence of change

4 of 12

Theme 1

Power of nature

  • Explores the theme of how nature is a powerful force that can cause suffering and destruction

  • Nature

    • Personified as the deadly enemy of soldiers in trenches

      • Has “merciless iced east winds that knive” them

      • Has snowflakes that “come feeling” for their faces with “********* stealth”

      • The man expected to die not from German gunfire, but from exposure to the horrible conditions and weather

  • There’s no progression in the poem

    • Mirrors relentlessness of nature

5 of 12

Theme 2

Effects and reality of conflict

  • Explores how conflict could cause both physical and psychological damage

  • Bleak imagery

    • Used to convey men’s pain

      • Description of the frost as “puckering foreheads crips”

        • Compels reader to imagine their flesh freezing

      • Comparing the noise of the wind to the “twitching agonies of men”

        • Creates a vivid picture of wounded soldiers

  • The reality of war leaves no room for patriotism or heroism

    • Men “cringe in holes” like frightened animals

    • Rhetorical questions (“what are we going to do here?”)

      • Emphasises the pointlessness of their suffering

  • The hopeless tone of the poem suggests that

    • The men believe they have little chance of surviving

    • They seem to have accepted that they will never see their families/homes again

      • Shows how a soldier could lose their ideals in war

6 of 12

Theme 3

Loss and absence

  • Explores how an absence of hope can lead to negativity and despair

  • The men in the trenches have no hope of things improving

    • The dejected line “We only know war lasts, rain soaks and clouds sag stormy”

      • Emphasises that their lives are miserable and filled with suffering

    • They understand that they are “dying” and know that at home “the doors are closed to them”

      • Shows that even thinking about home doesn’t provide any hope for the men

7 of 12

Technique 1

Bleak language

  • Assonance
    • Emphasises the men’s painful experience
    • Long ‘o’ sounds
      • Repeated in the third stanza
      • ‘Grow’ ‘Only’ ‘Know’ ‘Soaks’ ‘Slowly’ ‘Home’
      • Drawn out sounds
        • Reflects
          • Men’s exhaustion
          • Long monotonous days in the trenches
  • Sibilance
    • Used to recreate the noise of the battlefield
    • “Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence”
      • Imitates the sound of bullets whistling through the air 
8 of 12

Technique 2

Openings

  • Our brain ache”

    • Introduces the idea of pain and suffering

    • Highlights the fact that this is a collective experience, shared by many soldiers

  • “Winds” that “knive” the soldiers in the first line

    • Establish nature as an enemy

9 of 12

Technique 3

Traditional poetic imagery

  • Subverted

    • Emphasise the grim nature of their experience

      • “Dawn”

        • Brings misery instead of hope

      • Snow is “black” and “deadly”

        • Rather than white and pure

      • “Fires” of home are “crusted dark-red jewels”

        • They offer no warmth or comfort

10 of 12

Technique 4

Repetition

  • “But nothing happens”

    • Contributes to the tedious, monotonous mood

    • Confirms that there is little hope of the mood changing

    • Echoes the monotonous snow and rain that falls on men
11 of 12

Conclusion

  • Similarities first

  • Differences second

  • Message third

    • The real enemy of the soldiers is the cold and icy conditions
12 of 12

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar English Literature resources:

See all English Literature resources »See all Poetry resources »