Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Exposure
- Context
- Wilfred Owen went to the frontline of
the Somme in the winter
- Bitterly cold and
killed many
- January 1917, letter to his mother
- 'My platoon had no dug-outs, but had to lie out in the snow under
the deadly wind'...'hideous landscaped, vile noises,'...'everything
unnatural, broken, blastered; the distortion of the dead.'
- What Wilfred Owen is trying to do
- Emphasizes futility of war ('But nothing happens')
- Subverting/falsifying positive messages
prevalent in propaganda ('on us the doors are
closed- we turn back to our dying')
- Not sweet/honorable to die for country
- Questions the mass death of innocent lives due to war
- Conveys loss of faith
- Suggests constant anxiety of having multiple enemies
- Suggests that war generates a
society that sees a suffering
soldier as a coward
- Portray juxtaposition of positive and negative to
suggest that pleasant imaginations are short-lived
- What happens in the poem
- Describes feelings of
soldiers gradually
freezing to death in
trenches
- Soldiers huddle against gusts of wind and
snow waiting for something to happen
- Phrase 'nothing happens' is repeated = refrain
- Men are without hope
- Dream of comfort of home,but
know they won't return
- Despair has destroyed their faith in God
- Resentfully and stoically accepting their
miserable fate and await their death
- Words
- Dangerous
- Tedious
- Unfresh