exposure

• context - poet


  - wilfred owen joined the army in 1915 at 18

  - died a week before the war ended

  -suffered from shellshock
• context - war


  - war was romanticised in britain
• form


  -ABBA-C rhyme scheme

  - last line creates anti climax
• structure

  -8 stanzas, 5 lines

  - cyclical

  - anaphora

  - caesura
• language


  - repeated use of metaphors

  - allitertaion

  - personification of the weather
• "but nothing happens"


  -short, simple half-line

  emphasises bordem

  - emphasies tension

  - waiting for death
• "is is that we are dying"


  - answering first question

  - they are there to die
• "far off, like a dull rumour of some other war"


  - they are in a different war to that that is romaticsed

  - they are waiting for the real war
• "sudden succesive flights of bullets streak the silence"


  - sibilance and fricatives creates horrific image

  - creates soft sounds

  - highlights how deadly the weather is as the bullets seem like nothing
• "the merciless iced east winds that knive us"


  - nature is personified to seem as though it is attacking them

  - harsh monosyllabic words emphasise conditions

  -no pity, unforgivign

  -sinister tone
• "we turn back to our dying"


  -shows hopelessness

  -blunt passive statement shows solders dissapiontment in their cause"