Wilfred Owen Exposure Essay

At first, he was thrilled to fight for his country. But soon, he started to recognise the brutality and futility of the war. The sceneries were so appalling, that it even challenged his belief in Christianity. In his poem, ‘Exposure’, he uses personification in the line,

Explain how particular features of at least two of Wilfred Owen's poems set for study interact to affect your response to them.

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

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.

In the poem ‘Exposure' by Wilfred Owen, Wilfred Owen has used some film techniques to appeal to my imagination in this poem. Wilfred Owen has done this by using personification, repetition and alliteration to emphasise the main idea of humankind in conflict with nature and how tormenting nature and how much pain nature has affected on Wilfred Owen and the other world War I soldiers.

Wilfred Owen can be considered as one of the finest war poets of all times. His war poems, a collection of works composed between January 1917, when he was first sent to the Western Front, and November 1918, when he was killed in action, use a variety of poetic techniques to allow the reader to empathise with his world, situation, emotions and thoughts. The sonnet form, para-rhymes, ironic titles, voice, and various imagery used by Owen grasp the prominent central idea of the complete futility of war as well as explore underlying themes such as the massive waste of young lives, the horrors of war, the hopelessness of war and the loss of religion. These can be seen in the three poems, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and

Wilfred Owen’s poetry effectively conveys his perspectives on human conflict through his experiences during The Great War. Poems such as ‘Futility’ and ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ portray these perceptions through the use of poetic techniques, emphasising such conflicts involving himself, other people and nature. These themes are examined in extreme detail, attempting to shape meaning in relation to Owen’s first-hand encounters whilst fighting on the battlefield.

In “Exposure” by Wilfred Owen, the speaker exposes the atrocious conditions under which the soldiers live, by expressing the psychological and physical repercussions of the war. First, the speaker uses repetition to stress the anxiety that soldiers are facing. The speaker repeats “But nothing happens” four times throughout the poem to emphasize on the soldiers who are constantly afraid that another attack is going to happen soon (lines 5, 15, 20, 40). They live with the uncertainty of when the next strike is going to hit, which leaves soldiers with high anxiety. In the first verse, the speaker says “Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent…” (line 2) which signifies that soldiers are under such levels of stress that it is keeping them

In the first stanza the pace is very slow and a painstaking rhythm. Owen decides to use long words to illustrates how painstaking and slow the war was. Owen describes how painful and miserable the trenches are by using; similes, alliteration, hyperbole and onomatopoeia this is a wide range of language use and fits in well with what is described in the first stanza.

How does Owen’s portrayal of the relationship between youth and war move us to a deeper understanding of suffering?

army when he was 22 years old. He was injured in a shell explosion in

The writer is describing artillery fire during battle. I was left with the impression of a deafening noise and a sense that there was immediate fear in the mind of the soldiers. LIke the beginning of a play or movie involving warfare, Owen sets the scene perfectly alerting the reader that the poem is setting the scene as being probable. In my opinion “Monstrous” and “Anger” may be showing an aggressive

The opening nicely establishes the bond, as well as the idea of “games.” The eye game is well paid off. On page 2, saying that Owen “knows better than to say the wrong thing” is an internal feeling and something that the audience can’t see or really perceive, unless it’s more visual.

though they are so tired have to keep awake, so that they do not get

The second stanza speaks of how it so often slips our mind that war does not only affect the men who are in direct combat. The young women too, suffer greatly in silence. Though so removed from the grime and blood of the battlefield, one cannot imagine the excruciating pain of having to part with their loved ones, with the knowledge that 'the holy glimmers of goodbyes ' might as well be goodbye forever. Every moment of the day, they agonize over the terrifying thought that their loved one has been shot or injured. There is no way of telling - and the guessing game is exhausting. There is no more joy or excitement in life as each 'slow dusk ' drags by, their only reason for existence condensed into a single purpose - receiving news from the battlefield. Often time, their agonizing wait ends in a heartbreaking death. This is signified from the line 'the drawing down of blinds '.