Exposure Flashcards

1
Q

Why is the title of the poem “exposure?”

A
  • Owen is trying to “expose” what battle was really like and how the propogana around war is fake.
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2
Q

What was trench life like?

A
  • Dirty and dull (according to J . Bennet and Jack Dillon - soldiers who experienced the war.)
  • Soldiers felt unsafe and uncomftorble in a place that was supposed to be shelter.
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3
Q

When was exposure written?

A

Early 1900’s

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4
Q

What different types of weather are described throughout the poem?

A
  • “merciless iced winds that knive us.” - metaphorical: contrast between weather and weapons - suggesting the weather is their greatest enemy (power of weather.)
  • snow
  • Rain
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5
Q

Why is the phrase “but nothing happens” repeated throughout the poem?

A
  • Shows how they are in an endless cycle of waiting for an attack - on edge// no one is recognising the pain they’re going through!
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6
Q

How is the theme of the soldiers being forgotten about shown throughout the poem?

A
  • They hear bullets and imagine them to be a rumour of another war.
  • The doors back at home are closed on them.
  • God seems to have forgotten about them - they think so.
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7
Q

What is the main message of this poem?

A
  • Owen is criticing the government for making men go to war (futility.) He is showing the true reality of war (physical and mental conflict) - physical coming from the weather.
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8
Q

How does Owen use structure to show the confusion of the soliders (internal conflict?)

A
  • Elipses: they are looking for an answer confused what they are doing there?
  • 2nd stanza: big focus shift - showing how the soldier’s thoughts are flickering too!
  • Caesura when they are back home: flickering from images of home life flashing before eyes.
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9
Q

What is the significance of Owen describing the mad gusts of wind “like twithcing agonies of men?”

A
  • Shows the soldiers are hallucinating- unable to stay focussed.
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10
Q

What is the significance of the rhetorical question: “what are we doing here?”

A
  • They don’t know what the aim is of the war.
  • Owen is criticing this fact!
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11
Q

Give examples when there is contrast made between physical conflict and the weather’s conflict.

A
  • Dawn’s “melanchony army attacks in ranks of grey.”
  • “bullets streak the silence less deadly than the air.”
  • Accentuates how Owen’s enemy is the poor conditions not the actually conflict. Futility of war!!
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12
Q

What is the significance of the bullets that “streak the silence?”

A
  • Onompatopeia. Sibilance sounds like bullets they hear.
  • Reader imagines the situation they are in - shocked to see that the weather seems worse to them than the bullets.
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13
Q

The snow is described as doing this: “flock, pause and renew” what could this be a metaphor of?

A
  • Shows how soldiers who died in war would just be replaced and would die for absaloutely no reason!!
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14
Q

What do the soldiers hallucinate when the snow hits their faces?

A
  • They hallucinate the snowflakes to be blossoms. Dreaming about the summer.
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15
Q

In what instances is the weather personified and why?

A
  • “her melancholy army”
  • “feeling for our face.”
  • Shows the power of nature over man!!
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16
Q

What is the significance of the phrase: “the door is closed, on us the doors are closed?”

A
  • Shows how the soldiers have been forgotten about by the government.
17
Q

What is significance of Owen saying: “we turn back to our dying” after writing about home?

A
  • Shows how the soldiers are drifting in and out of consiousness - they are slowly dying from the weather!!
18
Q

How is the internal conflict of the soldiers shown when they think about God?

A
  • They are afraid they won’t get into heaven because they don’t believe/ are killing people.
  • They have lost everything!!
19
Q

Why is “But nothing happens” repeated at the end of the poem?

A
  • Ironic use. Shows how government can just replace the soldiers that have died and don’t need to worry about them.
20
Q

How is imagery of ice developed in the last stanza?

A

“shrivelling”
“foreheads crisp”// physical difficulty of war.

21
Q

How is the last stanza structured to show that the death of the soldier is dragging on ?

A
  • No fullstops in lines - deaths are drawn out.
  • Full stop is when they die.
22
Q

What is the lasting image of these soldiers?

A

“all of their eyes are ice.”
Metaphor
Immortalised in that state - in a disrespectful manner they will just be left to rot.

23
Q

What is the significance about this poem?

A
  • One of the first poems to show the true nature of war and not mask it all up with propoganda.
24
Q

What was Wilfred Owen’s experience in WW1 like?

A
  • Officer in WW1
  • 1917: Sent to hospital because of shell- shock.
  • Met Siegfried Sassoon - who was in the hospital because he wrote a letter to government telling them to stop the war.
  • Owen’s poetry was influenced by Sassoon’s idea.
25
Q

What main types of conflict are in the poem?

A
  • Weather conflict
  • Warfare conflict
  • Mental conflict
  • Conflict between government and soldiers.