GCSE English Literature

2. OVERVIEW
 Exposure is based on Wilfred Owen’s experiences of the winter of 1917
that he spent in the trenches. It depicts the soldiers waiting around
doing nothing in awful conditions. It also suggests that the soldiers are
immune to any emotion or what is happening around them.

3. CONTEXT AND THEMES
 The three main themes in ‘Exposure’ are that of war, the unforgiving
weather and the loss of faith by the soldiers. The use of the theme of
weather links back to the fact that this poem was written in the winter
of 1917 which is said to be the worst winter of the First World War.
Many of the men suffered from hypothermia and frostbite due to the
freezing weather and the thick mud that they had to endure in the
trenches.

4. STANZAS 1& 2
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?
So cold it
hurts, fed up,
brain-dead?
Personification-
wind is as bad
and as painful as
the bayonets
Dead inside? –
Seen so many
horrible things
Shows that they
are waiting/war is
not going to stop
So loud the ground is
shaking/Feel the sound?
– Sensory description
Rhetorical question –
questioning the point of war
and why they are there
fighting it
Links to the poor
communication
between the
generals and the
soldiers

5. STANZAS 3 & 4
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’s nonchalance,
But nothing happens.
Don’t know
anything else
except from war
Juxtaposition
between dawn
and misery
Sibilance – sound of
the bullets through
the air
Being suffocated
by the
atmosphere of
war – being
gassed?
Juxtaposition –
even nature seems
scared

6. STANZAS 5 & 6
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.
Don’t know that it
is happening
Told lies about what war would
be like when they joined
Only shells of people
left after what they
have experienced
The generals are called
mice? – cowardly
because they are not
fighting
Trapped in the trenches
with no way out except
from being killed
Treating their injured/Only
reason or purpose for them
being there is to die

7. STANZAS 7 & 8
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 shaking grasp,
Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
But nothing happens.
War has changed them
mentally and not just
physically
Praying to live
All the soldiers have lost faith in
God after what they have
experienced
The bodies in the mud
will be frozen
Happening to
everyone
Don’t know who they are
– ashamed to tell anyone
their names?/De-
humanising them –
Cannot be human to do
what they are doing
Fearful of what they
have or are going to
see
Everyone looks the same
after they have died/ Just
another person or
statistic/Lost their identity
Symptom of severe frostbite –
Links back to the conditions