Exposure

• Who is the poet of Exposure?

  • Wilfred Owen - soldier in WW1 meaning the poem is directly from the viewpoint of a soldier in the trenches, which contrasts with the other poems which are not written by someone who has actually been in war
  • Owen may use Exposure to critique the glorification of war and expose the brutal and harsh reality of trench warfare
• why does Owen write exposure?

  • Owen contrasts society's view on war as he protrays the enemy to be the relentless and inescapable weather rather than machinery and mankind
• 'Her melancholie army'

  • Personifies nature
  • Contrasts the typical view of mother nature as she is usually seen as nurturing, however 'army' depicts nature to be brutal and violent
• 'less deadly than the air which shudders black with snow'

  • Owen directly contrasts the battle with the weather showing that the battle in itself is less 'deadly' than the conditions they are living in
  • This utterly subverts society's view of war and exposes the hardships of trench warfare.
  • 'Black' connotes death in order to connote the mortal peril of the soldiers as the weather is draining the hope out of the soldiers and they are waiting through the suffering.
• 'the merciless iced east winds that knife us'

  • Owen personifies winds as 'merciless' in order to present weather as cruel and agressive
  • Furthermore, the wind 'knifes' the soldiers, presenting it a literal enemy as it harms the soldiers more than the battle
  • the metaphor 'knifes us' highlights nature's power to cause unimaginable pain and suffering
  • the sibilance in 'iced east winds' reflects the hissing sound which the 'merciless' wind would make which Owen may do to reinforce the eerie atmosphere to create vivid imagery of the conditions the soldiers face in the trenches
  • Owen does this to highlight the message that war is not only fought against the enemy , but also against relentless forces such as nature.