Exposure by Wilfred Owen

Exposure by Wilfred Owen

1. Verse 1

   • 'Our brains ache'
     • Shows that what happens affects all of the soldiers
   • 'merciless iced east winds that knive us'
     • 'Merciless'
       • lack of feeling the wind has towards the men
     • 'iced'
       • emotionally cold to the suffering
     • 'knive'
       • as if the wind is physically stabbing them
         • Personnification
   • 'worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous'
     • s - sibilance - reminiscent of the sound of the never-ending wind
     • phrases become into words - emphasises how scared and cold the soldiers are, not knowing what will happen
   • 'But nothing happens'
     • repeated once per stanza (x4) at the end
       • adds emphasis that it isn't just the war they are battling against - it is also the elements. Doing nothing prolongs their pain and makes them weaker for when they actually fight against people

2. Verse 2

   • 'Watching, we hear'
     • confusion makes them use different actions as one
   • 'mad gusts'
     • uncontrollable, unpredictable
   • 'Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles'
     • 'twitching'
       • gruesome - makes us feel pity
     • simile
   • 'far off, like a dull runner of some other war'
     • even though there is only one main war, the soldiers here are also battling against the weather
   • 'What are we doing here?'
     • anti-climax - they were supposed to be fighting, not sitting and being attacked by the cold

3. Verse 3

   • 'misery of dawn'
     • another day of agony - they know nothing will change and that they will deal with what they've been dealing with for the last few days
   • 'melancholy army'
     • sad army - more rain, wind and storms
       • metaphorically the only thing the soldiers are fighting
   • 'Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey'
     • compares the rain as soldiers. The 'ranks of grey' are the real soldiers'

4. Verse 4

   • 'wind's nonchalance'
     • the wind not caring

5. Verse 5

   • 'Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces'
     • Snow
     • personifies the snow as soldiers
   • 'we cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and star, snow-dazed'
     • 'cringe in holes'
       • as though the soldiers are animalistic
     • 'forgotten dreams'
       • ambiguous
         • what dreams?
           • dreams of fighting in the war?
           • dreams of being back at home
   • 'is it that we are dying?'
     • confused - what is real and what isn't?

6. Verse 6

   • 'slowly our ghost drag home'
     • the soldiers are imagining life back at home, and how they miss it
   • 'we turn back to our dying'
     • after imagining life back at home, they 'return' to the pain and the battlefield

7. Verse 7

   • 'For God's invincible spring out love is made afraid'
     • the soldiers feel betrayed
     • lost their faith in God
   • 'For love of God seems dying'
     • the soldiers feel broken and abandoned

8. Verse 8

   • 'This frost will fasten on this mud and us'
     • They will freeze
   • 'The burying party....in shaking grasp
   • 'Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice'
     • They recognise the dead
     • 'eyes are ice'
       • Dead- eyes are frozen
       • living- no emotion left

9. The tone of the poem is one of hopelessness & despair.

   • They feel like the army and God has betrayed and abandoned them

10. Weather is the enemy in the poem

11. Last line is shorter to emphasise importance