Exposure by Wilfred Owen

Question 1

What themes are presented in Exposure?

Answer 1

• power of nature
• power of institutions
• internal conflict
• psychological impact of conflict
• man vs nature

Question 2

Context in Exposure:

Answer 2

• speaker decribes war as a battle against the waether and conditions
• imagery of cold and warm reflect the delusional mind of a man dying of hypothermia
• owen wanted to draw attention to the suffering, monotony, and futility of the war

Question 3

Form and Structure in Exposure:

Answer 3

• repetition in “but nothing happens” creates a cyclic structure implying a never ending structure
• rhyme scheme ABBA and hexameter give the poem structure and emphasises the monotony
• pararhymes - “nervous/knife us” - only barely holds the poem together like the men
• free verse - with half rhyme reflects chaos in war and shows the lack of control the soldiers have

Question 4

“Our brains ache from the merciless iced east winds that knive us”

Answer 4

• The opening stanza delivers us to the bleak French landscape without delay, and Owen brings the surroundings alive by using action verbs
• shows that the soldiers are truly alone in a hostile environment, even nature has turned against them
• The sibilance ‘s’ combined with hard consonants ‘d’ and ‘t’ create a cutting, bitter edge to the elements which ‘knife’ the men, leaving us in no doubt about the pain they intentionally inflict
• It is adding evil personification to nature. It captures a sense of fear for the cold elements of nature.

Question 5

“But nothing happens”

Answer 5

• heightens the atmosphere of the poem, and also to shows the terror of living, day in, day out, waiting for death. It is a simple mechanism, but it works especially well in this part of the poem.
• reiterates the futility of war - after all their suffering, they achieved nothing

Question 6

“What are we doing here?”

Answer 6

• Owen shows the confusion of soldiers by asking, ‘what are we doing here?’ near the end. It is no secret that this war was not meant to last as long as it did and that by the time it was in its second year, many soldiers were fighting not for the king or for a country, but because they were there.
• shows hints of nihilism

Question 7

“Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.”

Answer 7

• The sibilant alliteration of ‘sudden successive’, ‘streaks’ and ‘silence’ with its ‘s’ sounds and reference to bullets being fired creates a new found change of pace to the slower depressing previous stanza.
• The sibilance reflects the hiss of silence juxtaposed with the hiss of the bullets.
• The ‘b’ sound of bullets opposes the ‘s’ sound creating the sound of impact; the bullet hitting a body. The plosive sound of the ‘b’ creates this.
• This line almost holds hope that something will happen as it contains the most action although this does not amount to anything as the next line refers back to the weather and how they will die because of the cold.
• This conveys the contrast between the silence and the sudden gunfire. Owen’s choice of words is invariably appropriate, and here ‘streak’ conveys the idea of speed, suddenness and harsh noise.

Question 8

“Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces”

Answer 8

• Wilfred Owen uses alliteration to emphasise the reality of war and inform the reader of the effect it has on a soldier.
• The sounds “Pale flakes with fingering stealth” gives an idea of how “snow-dazed” the soldiers where; and how mentally straining it was to concentrate for long amounts of time.
• verb “stealth” - highlights how hard it was for the soldiers to make sense of anything, whilst still being ambiguous: the identity of the real enemy. Owen personifies the weather to bring it to the reader’s attention; ironically, humanising the weather shows that the weather is dehumanising the actual humans.
• The word stealth has connotations with war, and suggesting the snow is one of the combatants in the war. Consequently it creates a chilling fear of paranoia in the reader, a fear that the men are being spied/stalked.
• Owen creates a sense of fear of something (the flakes) when for most people they are tiny flakes floating harmlessly down to earth. This links back to paranoia and a fear of everything in the situation of war.

Question 9

“Slowly our ghosts drag home”

Answer 9

• Wilfred Owen shows the reader the despair in the soldiers on the front line, and that there is no hope for them. Therefore presenting the idea that there is no
  point in the men to even go to war as there have lost before the war has even begun, even if they do come back there spirit will be lost at war and they will never be the same again
• This creates a feeling of disappointment in the reader as they realise that for many of these men, will not come back even though they so readily signed on, with the disappointment in the reader being aimed at the state who lied to these men and expose them to these conditions, allow them to die, and just wait for the next bunch of recruits to carry on the fight.
• This is enforced by the use of “ghosts” and “drag” as these symbolises that these men are only a shadow of their former selves and in war their “ghosts” symbolises their soul, which has been “dragged” and separated from their physical form, dehumanising themselves in the process.
• This shows the complexity of what Wilfred Owen wants the reader to understand, that the war had no victors, only losers as the men who returned were different from when they went off to a world of conflict, almost like hell where their souls were dragged away by “the devil” and despite returning home are still in a world of torment and despair, as every day they are reminded of the terrible events of the war.
• This links to “all their eyes are ice” - this shows the men as dormant with all the passion for their country, and life, in general, has been destroyed by war as their friends have been killed in action and they feel as if they have nothing
  to live for anymore, dehumanising them.

Question 10

“All their eyes are ice”

Answer 10

• Their eyes are frozen in time from the war creating the sense that they will always see the horrors despite winning or losing the war.
• refers to the dead soldiers, exposed for so long to withering conditions, or the burial party, numb to their task.