Exposure by Wilfred Owen

Verse 1
1. 'Our brains ache'
  1. Shows that what happens affects all of the soldiers
2. 'merciless iced east winds that knive us'
  1. 'Merciless'
    1. lack of feeling the wind has towards the men
  2. 'iced'
    1. emotionally cold to the suffering
  3. 'knive'
    1. as if the wind is physically stabbing them
      1. Personnification
3. 'worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous'
  1. s - sibilance - reminiscent of the sound of the never-ending wind
  2. phrases become into words - emphasises how scared and cold the soldiers are, not knowing what will happen
4. 'But nothing happens'
  1. repeated once per stanza (x4) at the end
    1. adds emphasis that it isn't just the war they are battling against - it is also the elements. Doing nothing prolongs their pain and makes them weaker for when they actually fight against people
Verse 2
1. 'Watching, we hear'
  1. confusion makes them use different actions as one
2. 'mad gusts'
  1. uncontrollable, unpredictable
3. 'Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles'
  1. 'twitching'
    1. gruesome - makes us feel pity
  2. simile
4. 'far off, like a dull runner of some other war'
  1. even though there is only one main war, the soldiers here are also battling against the weather
5. 'What are we doing here?'
  1. anti-climax - they were supposed to be fighting, not sitting and being attacked by the cold
Verse 3
1. 'misery of dawn'
  1. another day of agony - they know nothing will change and that they will deal with what they've been dealing with for the last few days
2. 'melancholy army'
  1. sad army - more rain, wind and storms
    1. metaphorically the only thing the soldiers are fighting
3. 'Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey'
  1. compares the rain as soldiers. The 'ranks of grey' are the real soldiers'
Verse 4
1. 'wind's nonchalance'
  1. the wind not caring
Verse 5
1. 'Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces'
  1. Snow
  2. personifies the snow as soldiers
2. 'we cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and star, snow-dazed'
  1. 'cringe in holes'
    1. as though the soldiers are animalistic
  2. 'forgotten dreams'
    1. ambiguous
      1. what dreams?
        dreams of fighting in the war?
        dreams of being back at home
3. 'is it that we are dying?'
  1. confused - what is real and what isn't?
Verse 6
1. 'slowly our ghost drag home'
  1. the soldiers are imagining life back at home, and how they miss it
2. 'we turn back to our dying'
  1. after imagining life back at home, they 'return' to the pain and the battlefield
Verse 7
1. 'For God's invincible spring out love is made afraid'
  1. the soldiers feel betrayed
  2. lost their faith in God
2. 'For love of God seems dying'
  1. the soldiers feel broken and abandoned
Verse 8
1. 'This frost will fasten on this mud and us'
  1. They will freeze
2. 'The burying party....in shaking grasp
3. 'Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice'
  1. They recognise the dead
  2. 'eyes are ice'
    1. Dead- eyes are frozen
    2. living- no emotion left
The tone of the poem is one of hopelessness & despair.
1. They feel like the army and God has betrayed and abandoned them
Weather is the enemy in the poem
Last line is shorter to emphasise importance

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Exposure by Wilfred Owen

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