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When the war began, it was expected to be over within months. Many young men enlisted thanks to patriotic propaganda such as Jessie Pope’s poem ‘Who’s for the Game?’ which depicted combat as a sport.

Owen, then working as a private tutor, signed up in October 1915. In May 1917, he was hospitalised, suffering from shell shock. It was whilst recuperating at a War Hospital in Edinburgh that Owen met fellow poet and invalid Sassoon. A few years Owen’s senior and already established as a poet, Sassoon was instrumental in giving Owen the confidence to share his work. The winter of 1917, when Owen returned to the trenches, was also one of the coldest in living memory on mainland Europe.

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Written about soldiers in a trench we expect to see a large amount of military language, however
most of this is used to describe and personify the weather as if it were and army attacking them. The poem ends with the
fear of tonight and the people who will lose lives and how none of this will change anything. Within the poem it is the weather
that is represented as merciless and triumphant

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The poem defies the convention of war and looks at the weather assaulting the soldiers, not another army. This is to highlight the unknown horrors of war to people at home. -The poet uses repetition and a consistent structure to create the static tone of the poem. The lack of change adds to the tone of despair. -The alliteration is used to create a sense of atmosphere to the weather and to draw parallels to the violence of war and weather

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Structure: The poem uses a large amount of ellipses, caesuras and repetition to create an on-going sense of waiting and boredom. The poem is made of eight stanzas with a consistent use of a half line to end. This reinforces the sense of stasis or sameness throughout the poem that nothing is happening. There is use of para-rhyme showing words which appear to rhyme yet sound wrong when read to create the sense of dauntlessness in the poem the soldiers are feeling. Owen also uses a huge amount of onomatopoeia and alliteration in the poem to emphasise the atmosphere and the sound of weather.

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Owen once declared of all his writing that: ‘My theme is war and the pity of war’. In this poem he looks at a particular aspect of how death claimed the lives of so many soldiers.
Evidence:
‘We only know war lasts’
Analysis:
The soldiers seem to have little idea of where they are, what they are fighting for and for how long it will be. There is only one certainty and it is that war is something that persists.

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Melancholy

Nonchalance,

puckering

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This poem is about looks at the horrors of warfare

In Exposure, the poet shows us war men become vulnerable and the experiences they had in the trenches left them constantly on edge. The men were continually unprotected from the weather and enemy fire, leaving them in misery

AO1 Evidence:
“Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us

” “But nothing happens”

“forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed”

“we turn back to our dying”

“sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence”

In the poem, the poet shows conflict by the poet has a sense of unfairness about the way the soldiers are being treated.If being 'exposed' to shoots does not kill them, then exposure to the terrible Weather conditions might do.

In the poem, the poet shows power when it says “ Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us”this suggest that nature is very powerful

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Exposure
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.
Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,
Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
What are we doing here?
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.
Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.
Less deadly 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&#39;s nonchalance,
But nothing happens.
Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces—
We 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.
Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;
Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.
For God&#39;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, and puckering foreheads crisp.
The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp,
Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
But nothing happens.
Wilfred Owen

9

(1893-1918)