Exposure

• Exposure


  Wilfred Owen's World War One poem describing his experience in trench warfare
• Opening stanza


  • Poet explains how the soldiers' brains are aching in the freezing cold wind
  • Soldiers are tired but have to stay awake on watch
  • Flares flying through the air confuse their memories of their position
  • Soldiers are worried by the lack of sound, they whisper, they're scared but nothing happens
• Rest of the poem

  • Follows the same format as the opening stanza
  • Poet begins to question the point of it all
  • Ultimately Owen determines the soldiers are there because they believe going to war is the only way to ensure a loving domestic life will continue for their children
• Wilfred Owen was born in 1893, joined the British army in 1915, and died in battle on November 4th, 1918
• Owen originally pursued a career in the church but gave up on that when he felt the church failed to care for those in its locality
• Owen's poetry


  • Often focused on the futility or pointlessness of war
  • Wants readers to understand the intensity of waiting during battle and the anticlimactic letdown when nothing happens
  • Soldiers lived on adrenaline for long periods of time resulting in shell shock and combat stress reaction
• Structure of each stanza

  • Begins with a blunt and powerful sentence
  • Followed by highly emotive vocabulary choices
  • Ends with an anti-climax: "but nothing happens"
• Rhyme scheme


  • a b b a c
  • Reflects the building momentum and anticipation of battle which is never realized
  • Repetitive nature reflects the repetitive and futile situation the soldiers are in
• Pararhyme


  • Two end of line words contain the same consonant sounds but not the same vowels
  • Gives a permanent sense of being nervously on edge
  • Soldiers are denied the satisfaction of full rhyme, forced to be incomplete and imperfect
• Personification


  • Weather is presented as more dangerous than the less deadly bullets
  • Highlights how nature is more deadly than the enemy soldiers
• Ending


  • Contrasts with the refrain "but nothing happens"
  • Creates a cyclical structure, highlighting the futility of war
• Comparison to other poems


  Bayonet Charge, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Remains, War Photographer