exposure

• Wilfred Owen's poem "Exposure" describes the terrifying experience of a night in the trenches during World War I, showing the trauma experienced by soldiers
• The soldiers in the poem are waiting in a trench, scared to rest as they could be attacked at any time
• Nature is personified in a sinister way in "Exposure" to create fear in the listener
• The soldiers in the poem can hear fighting in the background, and the cold is portrayed as more of a threat than the enemy soldiers
• The passing of time in the poem is marked by snow transitioning into signs of spring
• Wilfred Owen, the poet, wrote "Exposure" in 1917 while fighting in the trenches, providing an authentic first-person narrative of a soldier in conflict
• Owen's poem "Exposure" dispels the romanticized view of war by exposing the horrific reality of it
• The opening of "Exposure" focuses on the psychological impact of war, with a reference to the soldiers' brains aching in the merciless cold winds
• The rhyme scheme in "Exposure" emphasizes the monotony of war, with the simple fifth line creating an anti-climax to highlight the futility of war
• Owen uses a chaotic structure in "Exposure" to mirror the chaos and panic of war
• The cyclical structure in "Exposure" connects the end and beginning of the poem with the line "but nothing happens" to emphasize the lack of change or progress
• In "Exposure," Owen repeats "but nothing happens" to highlight the futility of war and the unchanged situation despite the soldiers' suffering
• Owen uses punctuation to separate home from the trenches, with the colon in "slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires" depicting the soldiers imagining the warmth of their homes
• The ellipses at the end of the first three lines in the poem emphasize the waiting and boredom of the soldiers, slowing the pace to make the reader experience the frustration as time stretches out their suffering
• Owen presents the soldiers as carrying out their moral duty to protect the innocent, linking to the idea of Jesus suffering and dying to save humanity
• Sibilance in "sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence" positions nature as the enemy, mirroring the sound of gunfire with snowflakes slicing through the air
• Nature symbolizes the antagonist throughout the poem, implying that nature is a bigger threat than the actual enemy, with Owen juxtaposing nurturing and aggressive connotations in "dawn massing in the east her melancholy army"
• The passage of time is represented by the changing seasons from "snow-dazed" to "sun-dosed" with "blossoms" and "blackbird fusses," showing the soldiers waiting in the trenches for a long time
• Owen conveys the despondency felt by the soldiers who believe they are being forgotten, with the metaphor "On us the doors are closed" implying that those at home forget about the soldiers dying for them
• Owen describes the soldiers' fear-driven constant state of alertness, unable to sleep due to the threat posed by the "dull rumour of some other war"
• In both poems, nature is presented as an inescapable force, highlighting the overwhelming influence of nature and changing the perspective of the listener to realize the speaker's and their own insignificance
• Tennyson and Owen are critical of military leaders' decisions, with both poets repeating phrases to criticize how violence and military mistakes continue to repeat themselves
• Both Owen and Hughes depict soldiers who have reached the battlefield and realized it is different from what they expected, addressing the psychological element of fighting in their poems