Exposure

Question 1

author

Answer 1

wilfred owen

Question 2

context

Answer 2

written during WW1(1917)
Owen died just 1 year later in 1918

Question 3

• opening line
• physical and mental pain
• nature is the enemy
• building of tension through punctuation
• personification

Answer 3

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us …

Question 4

• unsettling inaction
• building of pace and tension
• asyndetic listing
• end stopped

Answer 4

worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, / But nothing happens.

Question 5

• loss of humanity
• loss of individuality
• unfeeling

Answer 5

all their eyes are ice

Question 6

• refrain
• final line
• end stopped
• cyclical structure
• nothing achieved

Answer 6

But nothing happens.

Question 7

• disillusioned soldiers
• rhetorical question

Answer 7

Is it that we are dying?

Question 8

Form

Answer 8

• ABBA rhyme scheme with pararhyme : rigidity of war yet imperfections show through, dissatisfying like the war experience
• each stanza ends with a half-line, mirroring the lack of activity for the soldiers

Question 9

Structure

Answer 9

• 8 stanzas
• refrain
• cyclical structure - no sense of progression

Question 10

comparable poems

Answer 10

• bayonet charge (futility of war, actions vs inaction)
• The Prelude (nature is mans enemy, realisation vs death)
• Storm on the Island (Nature as the enemy, every day irrational fear vs death)
• Kamikaze (power of nature, joy vs death)