Exposure

• "Merciless iced east winds that ice us" 


  Imagery

  > "Merciless iced east winds" brutality of weather

  > "Knife us" sharp piercing sensation from the cold

  Personification

  > "iced winds"

  Metaphor

  > "Knife us" - slow, painful
• Big ideas

  • Brutality of war
  • Isolation and Desolation
  • The failure of leadership and authority
• Pararhyme


  "knife us", "nervous" "silent" "Salient"

  > contain same consonance not vowels

  > Soldiers are denied satisfaction of full rhyme
• Structure 


  1.Blunt and powerful sentence

  2. Highly emotive vocabulary choice

  3. Ends with anti climax

  > empathise with the soldiers
• 8 verse repetition 


  8 verse repetition > Emotional rollercoaster > Nothing ever happened
• ABBAC


  > Reflects building of anticipation and tension that never happened

  > Throughout the entire poem to reflect the repetitive futile situation they are in
• Final lines of final 4 verses


  > They relate to each other

  > Ambiguous lines

  > People losing religious beliefs due to brutality of war
• Personification


  "winds that knives us"

  "Mad gusts"

  "Air that shudders with black ice"

  > Overwhelming use

  > Nature is more deadly than soldiers as it is slowly yet surely killing them
• Sibilance 


  "Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence"

  > Imitate bullets or even the soldiers shivering from the harsh cold
• "But nothing happens"


  Cyclical structure

  > Futility of the war