How does ‘Exposure’ by Wilfred Owen tackle the Theme of War?
‘Exposure’ is a war poem written by Wilfred Owen in 1917 which describes how it felt like to be a soldier fighting war in the winter season. Owen focuses on the weather and shows how they are suffering more from the cold than getting wounded and hurt from the enemy which is not typical in war poetry. He has used a lot of figurative language and literary techniques to portray the cold and the soldiers’ feelings.
Firstly, Owen applies figurative language like personification to describe the cold in the first stanza, where he says: ‘Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us…’ This line explains how the winds are so cold and strong that it feels like it is
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Splitting the poem into two sections creates juxtaposition which contrasts and shows how bad the war is compared to their normal lives. It could be argued that it is not split into two parts as in the second part, the last four lines; it zooms back to the present where many of the soldiers have died. ‘Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,’. This last section sums up the whole poem and relates back to the first part to suggest conditions in war were very harsh and people could regret all they wanted to but in the end most people would die, of the cold in this case.
Thirdly, Owen’s point of view in this poem shows a bitter and gloomy setting. ‘The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow…’. This line of the poem applies personification to highlight the fact their despair is growing each day because he has used the word ‘dawn’. It could also mean that they are becoming exceedingly depressed as they have found they have to go through another day of war.
Furthermore to tackle the theme of war he has used anaphora to emphasize how dull and tedious war is as he says: ‘But nothing happens’ a couple of times. The constant repetition of this phrase gives you an idea about how bored they are and how they want something to happen. This point can be proven by the line before: ‘worried by silence, sentries whisper,
This is demonstrated in the line, ‘All their eyes are ice.’ The metaphor can be interpreted literally as the dead soldier’s eyes freezing solid due to harsh weather. On the other hand, the metaphor can be interpreted contextually, linking to the reality of war. The inner world of soldiers were impacted and altered thoroughly by the cruel savagery of war. For people, eyes are used to perceive and interpret the world. But by referring to the eyes as ice, Owen hints at the negative change in the way how soldiers perceive the world. Now with their cold, iced eyes, they view the world more cynically. On the whole, the metaphor conveys that the war had caused soldiers to have permanent trauma, as well as physical damage. As a result, this metaphor illustrates the traumatic reality of war beneath the government’s puffery propaganda. By presenting the negative aspect in the reality of war, Owen insinuates his anti-war
Wilfred Owen's war poems central features include the wastage involved with war, horrors of war and the physical effects of war. These features are seen in the poems "Dulce Et Decorum Est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth" here Owen engages with the reader appealing to the readers empathy that is felt towards the soldier. These poems interact to explore the experiences of the soldiers on the battlefields including the realities of using gas as a weapon in war and help to highlight the incorrect glorification of war. This continuous interaction invites the reader to connect with the poems to develop a more thorough
The obscure relationship between man and environment is addressed abundantly throughout each of the throughout the three poems, as it is made apparent that Owen tended to use pathetic fallacy as a motif to reflect the internal conflicts of the soldiers. When the weather is peaceful, the soldiers are too, as seen briefly in
Wilfred Owen uses language and poetic devices to evoke sympathy for the soldier in the poem by using in-depth descriptions. An example of this is in the first stanza where the soldier in the poem ‘shivered in his ghastly suit of grey’. The ‘g’ sound in the words ‘ghastly’ and ‘grey’ emphasises the horror of ‘ghastly’ combined with the dreariness of ‘grey’, which are now the two main features of his life. The word ‘ghastly’ shows something that is strange and unnatural. The adjective ‘grey’, which has connotations of bleakness, portrays an image of darkness and monotony. Furthermore, the verb ‘shivered’ shows that he is vulnerable and exposed. In the phrase, ‘Legless, sewn short at elbow’, the sibilance at the end of ‘Legless’, and in ‘sewn short’ tell us that the short-syllable words are ruthlessly to the point, so it emphasises the fact that the soldier has no arms and legs because of his wounds.
Owen uses Imagery as another method to convey the brutality of war and also as a means of contrast to show his life before and after. In the third stanza he creates a picture of blood being poured away; “poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry” and he uses metaphorical language to emphasis the point that he nearly bled to death as you cannot literally pour the blood out of your veins.
The soldiers who had attended the war were shown to have died brutally, like “cattle”, yet when reaching the home front, it is seen that they are laid to rest in a much more civil and dignified manner. The concept of this can be seen as an extended metaphor throughout the entire poem, with the battle front seen as a world filled with violence, fear and destruction, where as the home front is perceived as a place marked by order and ritual, a civilized world. The second sonnet opens with “What candles may be held to speed them all?”, invoking a more softer and compassionate tone towards the audience, more specifically through Owen’s use of a rhetorical question. It captures the readers’ attention, engaging them to feel empathetic and notice the shift of energy from anger and bitterness to a sadder and more somber tone. Owen’s use of descriptive language, as simple as it seems, such as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ provokes the audience to view the horrors of the war as if they had been placed onto children, because in reality the ‘men; who had signed themselves into war to fight in glory for their country had really only just been boys themselves.
Firstly, Owen uses some language features to appeal to my imagination such as personification to emphasise the idea of humankind in conflict with nature. In the first stanza, Owen mentions "our brains ache in the merciless iced east winds that knife us" this suggests how painful war is from the exposure to the extreme cold. Owen uses the word "merciless" to suggest
Para-rhymes, in Owen’s poetry, generate a sense of incompleteness while creating a pessimistic, gloomy effect to give an impression of sombreness. Strong rhyming schemes are often interrupted unexpectedly with a para-rhyme to incorporate doubt to every aspect of this Great War. Who are the real villains and why are hundreds of thousands of lives being wasted in a war with no meaning? In ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, the consistent sonnet rhyming scheme is disturbed by a half rhyme, “guns … orisons”, to show how the soldiers all died alone with only the weapons that killed them by their side, and a visual rhyme, “all … pall” to indicate that the reality of war is entirely the opposite to what it seems - no glory, no joy and no heroism, but only death and destruction. Owen occasionally works with this technique in a reverse approach to create similar thought. For instance, the assonance, consonance and half rhyme based poem, ‘The Last Laugh’, contains an unforeseen full rhyme, “moaned … groaned”, to emphasise that nothing is ever fixed in war except the ghastly fact that the weapons are the true winners. Different forms of Para rhymes often work together with common schemes to ably bring out the main ideas of Owen’s poetry.
Owen’s inner beliefs and perspectives tell himself to believe that the sun will rejuvenate the young soldier, despite the futility of the miracle occurring. This is a great example of Owen’s perspectives on human conflict. Owen continues the second stanza with thoughts questioning the sun’s creation of life in the first place: ‘Think how it wakes the seeds, - Woke once the clays of a cold star’. The repetition of ‘W’ symbolises the confusion of Owen and leaves him questioning why the sun has the potential to create life, but is unable to resurrect the fallen. Throughout the poem of ‘Futility’, Owen contrasts his opinions on the sun. He moves from acknowledging his affection to the ‘kind old sun’ in the first stanza, to finding the sun’s beams ‘fatuous’ and meaningless in the second. These techniques Owen uses convey his perspectives on human conflict extremely well.
The mood and tone drops throughout the poem. The start is fairly sombre, using phrases such as ‘cursed through sludge’, ‘marched asleep’ and ‘limped on’. The mood darkens in the second stanza. Owen uses words such
Owen also uses language of terror and powerlessness for the speaker as the poem progresses. Describing the soldier the speaker has seen fail to attach his gas mask, he says, “I saw him drowning” (14). He dreams of this encounter repeatedly, “[in] all my dreams, before my helpless sight/ He plunges at me” (15-16). In his dreams, he is not only powerless to aid this man, but
What is Wilfred Owen’s attitude towards Worlds War 1 and how is this shown through his poetry?
causes the poem to flow, and thus lightens up the dark and serious issue of war. The lines "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place." are easy to read; however, their meaning is extremely
<br>There are several image groups used in this poem, two of which I will be reviewing. The first image group is "Sleep or Dreams". Owen often refers to many subconscious states like the afore mentioned one, the reason why he uses these references so frequently is that war is made apparent to the
“In his poetry, Wilfred Owen depicts the horror and futility of war and the impact war has on individuals.”