Exposure

• Context

  • Wilfred Owens was a soldier, killed in battle one week before the armistice.
  • Owens was inspired by writers such as Siegfried Sassoon who was also a war writer who critiqued patriotism and jingoistic attitudes.
  • Owens wrote his poetry to express the horror of war as opposed to internalising it.
  • Exposure was written in 1917 as Owens was at war in the trenches, creating an impression of salience on the reader.
  • Exposure contrasted the jingoistic and glamourised portrayals of war by poets such as Jessie Pope.
• dawn massing in the East her melancholy army

  The quote juxtaposes traditional views of Mother Nature as nurturing with the brutality and systematic violence of an Army. This is Ironic as "dawn" traditionally seen as a symbol for new beginning and change but there is no such change in sight for the soldiers as the future looks bleak. It highlights how the soldier's suffering is continuous, and the arrival of a new day does not herald a new beginning.
• less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow

  Owen directly contrasts the battle with the weather. This underlines the suffering of the soldiers. It exacerbates that the danger of war did not just derive from battle, instead they had to battle with the real war- facing the weather. The usage of colour imagery in “black” connotes death and finality and emphasises the mortal peril of the soldiers.
• Our brains ache

  In the first line, Owen states “our brains aches". This could be seen as inspiration from his beloved poet John Keats in Ode to a Nightingale when he says, "My heart aches". As Owen subverts "heart" to "brain" to make it more applicable to a war context- the war was a battle on the brain and mind. The plural of "brains" shows this collective camaraderie and how they all suffered together. This may all stem from the soldier's fear and simultaneous resignation to his fate.
• "Wearied we stay awake because the night is silent

  The fear of peace highlights how the soldiers have been subject to such barbarity and belligerence, they do not seek comfort in the silence and peace as this is just the lead up to more barbarism.
• But nothing happens

  Shows that the soldier's fears are ongoing but never come to full fruition. Its repetition emulates the soldier's endless fear and suffering.
• We turn back to our dying

  This shows a sense of resignation towards the inevitable. This interestingly shows an absence of fear, rather just grim defeat, perhaps showing that the soldiers have learnt to not fear death as they are always faced with this prospect.
• "sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence"


  The usage of sibilance illustrates nature as an enemy. The sibilant consonants resemble the sound of ammunition, indicating to the reader that the real threat is snowflakes, which pierce through the air akin to bullets. This breaks the preceding solitude. It indicates that the soldiers' anticipated struggle is with nature rather than the opposition. The snowfall is not the "dull rumour of some other war," but a genuine threat. The perilous aura is reinforced by the serpent-like overtones of the sibilance used.