EXPOSURE
A Poem By Wilfred Owen
Presentation by ‘Richard’ and ‘James’
More personalised
A sense of perspective; Owen portrays
the conditions from the troops’
perspective
Rapid rolling
adjectives listed to
portray a feeling
of n
KEY THEME: SILENCE
Simile: the wind compared to a
sharp knife that pierces the
soldiers
Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us...
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent...
Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient...
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
But nothing happens.
ot only suspense
but also a blunt
Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,
way of adding a
Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
sense of
Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
anticlimax, with
Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
following line
What are we doing here?
highlighted in
blue.
Again, similes between the conditions and atmosphere
and human emotions.
ANTICLIMATIC FINAL SENTENCE
Expertly introduces a sense of suspense and heightens the inevitable climax
at the end of the poem
Conditions depicted so
vividly by Owen also
portrayed by John Nash in
his picture ‘Over The Top’.
The picture also picks up
the eerie unnatural aura of
Owen’s poem.
Hyperbole exploited by Owen to dramatic
effect, similarly to the preceding and
succeeding paragraphs, to grab the
attention of his audience.
Conditions heavily focused
upon – recurring theme.
The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow...
We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey,
But nothing happens.
Alliteration –
again to grab the
attention of the
reader and deliver
his metaphor of
bullets to birds.
COLOUR
-Dreary colour
Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.
- Melancholy
Less deathly than the air that shudders black with snow,
With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew;
We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,
Wind has a
But nothing happens.
sense of
purpose!?!
Personification of
conditions; in this case
– snow.
Structure :- Recurring: most paragraphs consist of; a
dramatic first sentence (red), a rapid rolling ‘list’ of emotive
adjectives or descriptions (blue) and finally an eerie
anticlimax (green.)
Reminding us whose
perspective this is.
“We” – context – collectivism in the trenches
and in the army - interdependence.
Dramatic hard-hitting sentence, again giving
life to conditions, as if Owen is manipulating
them or that they have some malevolent
intention.
Rhetoric – we
know they are
dying because
we can sense
there should
be some
climax to the
poem.
“quote”
“here and there, the red dawn glow…” – some of Owen’s
vivid literary portraits are echoed in Sherriff’s“Journey’s
End”
Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our facesWe cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,
Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,
Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses,
-Is it that we are dying?
Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed
With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;
For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;
Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed,We turn back to our dying.
Sense that climax is
oncoming by showing
that the soldiers are
reminiscing on past
times.
“snow-dazed” – “sun-dozed”
This both offers contrast but also offers some insight into
some of the battle conditions.
Subtle references to death – “the innocent mice
rejoice; the house is theirs”. It was common
knowledge that the soldiers had to share their
trenches and dugouts with mice and rats.
? – the same structure is kept throughout; one would expect that there would be some change in the
structure either to speed it up to introduce a dramatic climax or simply drag it out to evoke an
anticlimax… however Owen doesn’t noticeably vary his approach throughout the poem.
Owen depicting the destruction of God’s very own creations in the face of
rampant ‘war’, which is almost personified in this penultimate stanza.
Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;
Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.
For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;
Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,
For love of God seems dying.
Tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us,
Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.
The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,
Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
But nothing happens.
THEME: THE
INFLUENCE OF
GOD ON THE
BATTLEFIELD
Owen is heavily accentuating
this message – the “love of God
seems dying”. It would seem the
ultimate comment to say that the
battlefield extinguishes the very
belief in God, as He is helpless
in the face of the cackle of
gunfire.