Exposure

• AO3:

  • Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 and died in 1918, one week before the end of WWI.
  • He joined the war in October 1915, but after some traumatic events on the battlefield, he was sent to hospital to be treated for shell-shock.
  • He wrote poetry throuhout his time in the war and they are famous for their vivd imagery and shocking truths about the reality of war.
• Overview:

  This poem centres on a group of British soldiers as they wait in the trenches and battlefields for war. The main conflict here is between the soldiers and the biting winter weather. Own highlights the extreme conditions these men were subjected to in WWI. This is not the type of danger and suffering people expected the British soldiers to be dying of. Owen wanted to expose the realities of life for the soldiers in WWI.
• "Our brains ache, in the merciless iced winds that knive us..."

  • Personification

  The wind is personified as a murderer. The winds have no mercy and the soldiers feel as if they are being stabbed with cold. This is in contrast to being stabbed with real bayonets in a real battle. Their brains ache with both cold, and the extreme fatigue, loneliness, and despair they all felt.
• "Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence. Les deadly than the air that shudders black with snow."

  • Alliteration
  • Imagery

  The alliterative 's' sounds mimic the sound of the bullets streaking trough the air. Could be sharp intakes of breath of men in shock. Could also be the sound of shivering. The bullets are described as 'less deadly' than the snow. People at home in Britain would have been shocked to hear that thei brave soldiers were being killed by the cold than combat. The image of the air 'shuddering black' with snow contrasts the joyful images of Christmas back home.
• "The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp, Pause over half-known faces".

  • Effective language

  The reader is presented with the image of these soldiers burrying their own men. The 'shaking grasp' could be because of the cold. It could also be the effects of PTSD. The 'half-known' faces could refer to the fact that these men didn't know each other very well. Or maybe they no longer recognise each other.
• Aspects of Power and Conflict:

  • Reality of conflicts and the deaths that are a result.
  • Seeks to dismiss the flamorisation of patriotism and expose the truths of WW1
  • Conflict between man and nature.
  • Power of nature.
• Poems that can be linked:

  • Bayonet Charge
  • The Charge of the Light Brigade