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
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
-
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
- Regular rhyme scheme
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
-
-
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
-
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
-
-
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
-
-
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
- Reflects
- 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
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
-
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
-
-
-
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
-
Conclusion
-
Similarities first
-
Differences second
-
Message third
- The real enemy of the soldiers is the cold and icy conditions
Comments
No comments have yet been made