Exposure

• He had a career in the church but found it hypocritical
• At the time war poetry was new as there was not a major war for 100 years
• He was inspired by Sassoon who helped him while he had shell shock and encouraged him to express his feelings in poetry
• He was a soldier in 1917
• Beginning of poem

  " Our brains ache in the merciless iced east winds that knife us "

  • pararhyme ( incomplete ) and personification
• The horror of war and bullets

  " Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence "

  • Fricatives and sibilance
• The faith in god

  " For love of god seems dying. " “ We turn back to our dying “

  Semantic field of death and decay makes the soldiers accept the inevitability of death

  Disillusionment of religion due to dehumanising conditions as well as indoctrination of jingoism
• How the soldiers feel

  " Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous "

  • Asyndetic listing