Exposure

Question 1

Why is the title of the poem “exposure?”

Answer 1

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

Question 2

What was trench life like?

Answer 2

• 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.

Question 3

When was exposure written?

Answer 3

Early 1900’s

Question 4

What different types of weather are described throughout the poem?

Answer 4

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

Question 5

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

Answer 5

• 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!

Question 6

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

Answer 6

• 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.

Question 7

What is the main message of this poem?

Answer 7

• 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.

Question 8

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

Answer 8

• 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.

Question 9

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

Answer 9

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

Question 10

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

Answer 10

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

Question 11

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

Answer 11

• 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!!

Question 12

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

Answer 12

• 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.

Question 13

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

Answer 13

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

Question 14

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

Answer 14

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

Question 15

In what instances is the weather personified and why?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

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

Answer 16

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

Question 17

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

Answer 17

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

Question 18

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

Answer 18

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

Question 19

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

Answer 19

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

Question 20

How is imagery of ice developed in the last stanza?

Answer 20

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

Question 21

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

Answer 21

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

Question 22

What is the lasting image of these soldiers?

Answer 22

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

Question 23

What is the significance about this poem?

Answer 23

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

Question 24

What was Wilfred Owen’s experience in WW1 like?

Answer 24

• 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.

Question 25

What main types of conflict are in the poem?

Answer 25

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