Précis: The Poem is an in-depth view of life in the frosted winter of Southern France, where soldiers on duty would be left exposed to the elements.
Context: Wilfred Owen was a soldier and officers in World War 1. He died before the end of the war but during his time he saw the full horror of conditions on the front line. He wrote a number of poems about this, published after the war with the help of fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon.
World War One began in 1914 and at first, it was predicted that it would end swiftly. However, as both sides dug trenches across France and Belgium, the opposing armies became locked in a that neither side could break. By the winter of 1917, both sides had sustained massive losses and extreme cold weather made the misery even worse. It was said to be the coldest winter in living memory. The soldiers suffered from and frostbite and many developed trench foot, a crippling disease caused by feet being wet and cold and confined in boots for days on end.
Owen and his fellow soldiers were forced to lie outside in freezing conditions for two days. He wrote: "We were marooned in a frozen desert. There was not a sign of life on the horizon and a thousand signs of death... The marvel is we did not all die of cold."
It was against this background that Owen wrote Exposure.
Owen and a number of other poets of the time used their writing to inform people back in Britain about the horrors of the war and in particular about life on the front line. The picture they painted the scenes of glory portrayed in the British press. Exposure is a particularly hard-hitting example of this.
Owen had joined the army in 1915 but was hospitalised in May 1917 suffering from shell shock (which is known today as PTSD – Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). At the hospital, Owen met the already established war poet Siegfried Sassoon who, recognising the younger man's talent, encouraged him to continue writing.
Owen eventually returned to the war but was tragically killed just days before the war ended; he was just 26. He is now regarded as one of Britain's greatest war poets.
The war itself was often criticised because of a huge loss of life for very little gain. During the Battle of the Somme, over 60,000 British soldiers died in one day, and in all, they only gained 6 miles by the end of the war. Owen's poems were often angry that the soldiers were in muddy dangerous trenches while the generals behind the lines were living in comfort. Owen's poems tried to show the truth of conditions to people back home. He was not against fighting but was angry about the conditions soldiers had to live with in order to do so.
Themes: The poem itself is based on war and so links to conflict. The poem itself is about the weather and conditions of living in the trenches rather than any fighting. It is more a poem about the conflict between man and nature. This is extremely relevant because man has created machines that can launch explosive shells for miles and destroy the landscape, and yet, nature can still do more harm than any of it.
Having been 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 an 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.
War: In this poem, he looks at a particular aspect of how death claimed the lives of so many soldiers. 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: "We only know war lasts"
Weather: The freezing conditions are seen as being dangerous as the enemy. The soldiers are fighting two battles at once and at one point, bullets are seen as less deadly than the cold. The weather is likened to an army that gathers and assaults the soldiers in the trenches: "Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army / Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey".
Despair: One of the casualties of war is the men's loss of faith in what they are doing and why they are there. Death is seen as inevitable. The soldiers have lost their religious faith. This implies that they are not looking forward to any sort of after-life once death has occurred and it makes their situation even more distressing: "For love of God seems dying".
Structure: The poem uses a large number 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 a use of para-rhyme showing words which appear to rhyme yet sound wrong when read to create the sense of unsettledness 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.
It is also part of the more general disruption of the rhythmic structure which uses as its basis. Many of these short lines are either or the repetition of the phrase "But nothing happens". Both have the effect of emphasising the apparent pointlessness of what is going on.
The first four lines of each stanza follow the rhyming pattern of abba. This regularity emphasises the unchanging nature of daily life in the trenches. Closer inspection shows that many of the rhymes do not quite work as full rhymes eg: knive us/nervous, wire/war, brambles/rumbles.
The half-lines are also used to help unsettle the reader and defy the expected outcome, something which again echoes the experience of war.
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'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'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.
Salient = a piece of land or section of fortification that juts out to form an angle or an outward bulge in a line of military attack or defence.
Poignant = evoking a keen sense of sadness or regret.
Sidelong = directed to or from one side; sideways.
Language: In contrast to the brutalities of the war, the vocabulary Owen uses is sophisticated. The most notable feature of the language is Owen's skilful use of alliteration and assonance.
A particularly effective example of alliteration comes in the fourth stanza with the repetition of the letters "s", "f" and "w": "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."
The repeated use of the "s" sound reminds the reader of the bullets which are whizzing past the ears of the soldiers. As the lines follow one another so, gradually, the "s" sounds fade away; just as the hail of bullets would do. Intertwined into the same stanza are two other careful uses of alliteration as Owen uses the repeated "f"s on the third line and "w"s of the fourth line to form intricate word patterns. "The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow... We only know war lasts, rain soaks"
A clear example of assonance can be found in the third stanza where the sound of a long "o" in the words "soak", "know" and "grow" emphasises the slow tedious wait for something to occur. This same long "o" sound occurs again in the sixth stanza.
Stanza by Stanza Analysis:
First Stanza: The beauty of Owen's poetry lies in the simplicity of his words: he does not need to tangle himself up in words to show what he means. The opening stanza delivers us to the bleak French landscape without delay, and Owen brings the surroundings alive by using action verbs. For example, "our brains ache, in the merciless iced east wings that knive us". Not only that, the use of his language shows that the soldiers are truly alone in a hostile environment. Even nature has turned against them. Even nature is angry at them.
They exist in their own world, and yet, as we can see from the stanza, they seem to scarcely exist at all. Tired and aching, they trudge onwards – the silence offering them enough threat to stay awake, and thus, through Owen's description, we, as well, are afraid of the silence. There is so much in the first stanza that is building, the atmosphere pushing up to an almost tangible point by the end line "but nothing happens", and while the phrase helps to entrench the idea of immovability, of soldiers, stuck, it seems to hint that something is on its way to happening.
Second Stanza: In the second stanza, Owen introduces the war: always present, even when it is not visible. The phrase "twitching agonies", although simple, helps to nudge the reader into the poem. Also, note the distant prevalence of war; although not immediately there, the presence of it is felt in the simplest of words – "the flickering gunnery rumble", "the dull rumour of some other war".
Once more, Owen shows the confusion of soldiers by asking, "what are we doing here?" near the end. It is no secret that this war was not meant to last as long as it did and that by the time it was in its second year, many soldiers were fighting not for their king or for their country, but because they were there.
Third Stanza: The awful continuation of war seems to be a cycle – "we only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy", an inevitable fact of life, a piece of nature that the soldiers have now taken to be as accurate as possible. Everything is war. Dawn masses her melancholy army, "attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey / but nothing happens". Again, the use of "but nothing happens" works twofold: to heighten the atmosphere of the poem, and also to show the terror of living, day in, day out, waiting for death. It is a simple mechanism, but it works especially well in this part of the poem.
Fourth Stanza: Nature, here, seems to be an attacking force itself – the bullets are "less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow", the wind is nonchalant at their suffering. Owen gives the impression that the soldiers have been lost in a drifting, desolate land, where everything at their beck and call is going to attack them, where everything strives to see them hurt.
Fifth Stanza: Note the misery inherent in these few stanzas. The soldiers have been beaten – not by the Germans, but by the weather, the awful, crushing weather that has left them unable to fight, that has dazed their minds to days of brighter futures, that has left them in a shell-hole of misery. They have reached the point that the despair they feel feels almost like death, and there is no way out of it, not for these soldiers. There is no stanza that helps to lift the poem up; it is singularly and wholly sad, reflecting the soldiers' situation.
Sixth Stanza: Even in peace, there is exhaustion – "slowly our ghosts drag home". And there is the sense, here, that peace is not really for them. It is glimpsed, not attained. "Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed", Owen writes, and this shows the distance between soldier and civilian, that the soldiers cannot envisage, anymore, a state of peace. They are at war, and thus their lives have been completely swallowed up by the presence of war.
Seventh + Eighth Stanzas: The despair reaches a point in the final two stanzas. This is where action, should it happen, must happen – however, nothing does. The soldiers die alone, in a field, frozen, and are found by the members of the army that bury the dead. They come across them in this field, and wait for something to happen – but nothing does. All of the soldiers have died miserable and far away from home, scared and in pain, and the final "but nothing happens" seems to serve as an idea that these things cannot be changed now. This is the way that life is. There is no way out of this life but through death.
Line by Line Analysis:
- "Our brains ache," - The opening is abrupt as if the poem is explaining what is happening in the midst of the experience. This has the effect of hooking the reader in. The present tense also gives a sense of immediacy. The pronoun 'we' indicates that Owen was part of the experience, at one with his comrades.
The first three words could refer to a headache, head injury, or shell-shock, the latter a mental affliction caused by the experience of war, especially common amongst the younger soldiers.
It could also refer to the fact that they are trying to work out why this war is being fought, "But nothing happens". There is, of course, no reason. They may also be wondering why their commanders have required them to wait in the trenches insufficiently protected from the cold, leading to their death.
- "in the merciless iced east winds... the night is silent" - The harsh weather conditions are an additional opponent for the soldiers. There are sibilant "s" and "w" sounds in "iced east winds" — that convey the biting cold, the intensity of the wind that hurts them as if stabbed with a knife.
The of the wind suggests that the weather is like a deliberately vicious and inescapable enemy.
The men are faced with double peril; enemy soldiers and the risk of hypothermia from exposure. To emphasise how long this drags on, ellipses are used after "silent"...
- "Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient" - The flares confuse them and they forget what matters: the battleground. Owen can also be referring to the soldiers' memory of the battlefield.
He has chosen the word "salient" partly because it is a slant rhyme with "silent". He uses this technique again, rhyming "knive us" and "nervous". A frequently employed technique by Owen, this has an oddly unsettling effect on the reader, as well as being a reflection the soldier's experience of war.
- "Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous" - Owen uses irony and a list of three to convey the idea of fear contradicting whether the soldiers are as brave as they are set out to be. The sibilant "s" in this line could mirror the whispering of the soldiers but could also mimic the wind whistling in a cruel, harsh, and merciless way. The commas show the slow passage of time.
- "But nothing happens." - This is a refrain, a repeated line in this poem that will occur at the end of stanzas one, three, four and eight. The effect of this repetition is to emphasise Owen's belief that this war is futile, and that the soldiers are thereby serving a little function at a great cost. It is also a reference to the fact that the commanders failed to change the conduct of the war and allowed the men to die in such circumstances. The phrase is ironic. Though the soldiers feel that nothing is happening, in reality, they are slowly but surely dying.
- "Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire" - Juxtaposing "watching" and "hear" again emphasises the confusion the soldiers are experiencing throughout the poem, as they are two different senses described as one.
Not only do they battle against men, but also the weather. This suggests that they are being torn by the elements, and God has abandoned them. This is suggested again later on in the poem.
The ''mad gusts also possibly symbolise the inner state of the men. They are at a point where they are questioning their presence on the front lines but do not have the energy or will to protest (possibly out of fear of accusations of cowardice from Commanders).
- "Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles" - Using a simile, Owen suggests the agony of the men reflected in the wind. The imagery of men struggling with the "brambles" — a tough, prickly, wild shrub — gives the reader an idea of the conditions and how appalling war is. They cannot escape the war, and in attempting to do so they become more enmeshed.
The wire itself is an artificial creation, and a symbol of the war they should be fighting — against the enemy. Everything, artificial and natural, causes the soldiers pain.
- "Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles" - All the soldiers can hear around them is the sound of guns in the distance. The word "incessantly" means constantly; for the men, the war seems never-ending.
The phrase 'the flickering gunnery rumbles' has a distinctive rhythm, and may echo the distant, continuous sound the men can hear. 'The last words "gunnery" and "rumbles" are onomatopoeic. The "u" sound is assonant.
- "Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war" - At this point, the soldiers are so weary and jaded by both the weather and war that they feel completely detached from it, hence the "dull rumour".
Another possibility is that the battle with enemy soldiers has become less threatening than the perils of the weather.
The phrase "Rumour of some other war" is quoted from Matthew 24:6, which states "You will hear of wars and rumours of wars." This reflects Owens previous religious beliefs; we know he, like many others, questioned his faith as a result of the suffering he experienced.
- "What are we doing here?" - There are anti-climactic rhetorical questions at the end of stanzas two and five. These give a feeling of incompletion and unease as it leaves unanswered questions.
Though this is written in the first person, Owen also addresses the reader in this question. Why are they here? Are they dying? And if yes, then when? The anticlimactic and disappointing end to each stanza reinforces the feeling of boredom and anxious anticipation of the soldiers, as well as making the reader feel as though they connected with them.
- "The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow" - The 'poignant misery' of dawn is ironic, as in normal life dawn is thought of as positive, the start of a new day and a metaphor for renewal. Here, it is 'poignant' as it is the coldest time when men will die; or, if they survive, be forced to face another terrible day.
- "We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy" - It's the only thing they know, as they are confused and numb to the whole situation. "War lasts" being juxtaposed with 'rain soaks' joins something very normal to something horrific, but both are part of everyday life for them.
Note the heavy, slow rhythm of this line, with long assonant vowels in 'clouds', and 'know' and 'soaks', and especially the last phrase 'clouds sag stormy.' If spoken aloud, the words would be difficult to say. Sibilance is used also; it creates an eerie watery sound, echoing lines one and two of the first stanza.
- "Dawn massing in the east... shivering ranks of grey" - The comparison between the enemy soldiers and the weather is more direct here with the use of the word "army"; these ranks of grey could be rain or hail.
This may also be because the German soldiers wore grey and attacked from the east, like dawn.
The word "shivering" is onomatopoeic, conveying the idea of chattering teeth and trembling bodies.
- "Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence" - The sibilant alliteration of "sudden successive", "streaks" and "silence" with its "s" sounds and reference to bullets being fired creates a newfound change of pace to the slower depressing previous stanza.The continuation of "s" could imply how the bullets never stop and are also continuous. This helps to illustrate just how tedious the conflict is.
The plosive "b" in bullets mimics the sudden noise and activity.
"Streak the silence" emphasises the contrast between the silence and the sudden gunfire. Owen's choice of words is invariably appropriate, and here the "streak" and "silence" convey the sense of speed, suddenness and harsh noise.
- "Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow" - If read carefully this becomes less clear. Firstly, It isn't the snow that is black. but the air is 'black with snow'. It is a complex phrase. It could mean that the contrast of white snow against black air deepens the effect of the black. Yet, it also reads as if the snow somehow affects the air to blacken it. One could interpret that this as a juxtaposition where the phrase "black with snow" implies that because the snow on the battlefield is' black' it is more 'poisonous' and deadly than white snow.
Yet another imaginative suggestion is that black snow could also be the shot from the guns and explosions. These man-made things have "put a bullet through mother nature", making her angry and she is now showing her wrath through the lethal cold weather.
- "With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew" - The use of alliteration here — the "fl"s in "flock", "flakes" and "flowing" — speeds the tempo of the poem. It also juxtaposes the soft consonants with the harshness of war as the repeated "fl" sound conveys the image of snow gently touching their faces as they wait for death.
The snow may be viewed as a kind and gentle side of the weather that, the soldiers might have believed, had been sent by God. This would add a sense of irony that they are not killed by the acts of war but God's power. This would fit with the rhythmic and gentle pace, like the snow falling. At the end of the line, Owen places a semi-colon, a pause which has the effect of a caesura. The next line returns to the meandering pace.
Another interpretation is that the deliberately uneven rhythm creates an increasing sense of anxiety and tension as death approaches.
A further interpretation is that the military semantic field, with words like 'pause' and 'renew', throughout the poem suggests that the snow is being commanded by God, imitating the "stand", "attention" and "at ease" orders given to soldiers.
- "We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance" - The air is not concerned about the temporary threat of the bullets as they will only claim a few lives. The wind is personified here to show that it is the greater of the two evil. It knows that it will claim more lives in time.
Owen's choice of the word "nonchalance" is perfect. It suggests the meandering movement of the snow, and that the elements are greater than and oblivious to the foolish deeds of humans.
- "Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces" - The personification of the snow and cold emphasises how the weather is as much of a threat as the enemy soldiers.
Once more Owen uses the alliterative "f"s and "l"s, echoing line three of the previous stanza particularly, but throughout the poem, he uses the words "flakes" and "fingering" to sustain the image of snow.
The use of the word "pale" connotes death and sickness which is a common result of war.
It could also represent the fear the soldiers feel as they sit in the trenches much like Wilfred Owen did himself.
- "We cringe in holes... Deep into grassier ditches" - The soldiers contemplate what might have been, or a version of their life where the 'grass was greener' ("grassier ditches"). This was especially relevant to the Great War where many young men were conscripted to fight, once the great wave of enthusiasm for volunteering had died. Society was less urban and many of the recruits were country boys who would have yearned for the green of England where they once lived.
- "So we drowse, sun-dozed" - He has used Caesura here (a full-stop before "So") the sudden pause in the middle of a line. The reason is to create a break to indicate the transition from the present to the idyllic past.
They are half asleep, exhausted from the pain of each day, but they can't fully sleep because of the relentless weather and discomfort. Note the rhyming "drowse" and "sun-dozed".
Furthermore, note that in previous line the soldiers "stare, snow-dazed". Sun and snow are two very different things and the dozing soldiers could be a reference to the hallucinatory state of clinical hypothermia, where they believe they are living the warmth of happier memories.
There is also a para-rhyme in 'dazed' and 'dozed', this could emphasise the confusion in the thoughts and actions of the soldiers. It also leaves the readers with a sense of incompleteness, as were the soldier's lives.
- "Littered with blossoms" - Tied to the Buddhist themes of mortality, mindfulness and living in the present, Japanese cherry blossoms are a timeless metaphor for human existence. Blooming season is powerful, glorious and intoxicating, but tragically short-lived — a visual reminder that our lives, too, are fleeting. This suggests that maybe the soldiers believe their life is coming to an end. Blossom is also revered as a symbol of rebirth and optimism. They bring hope and new dreams, and when cherry blossoms are in full bloom, the future is bursting with possibilities. This is a massive contradiction to the other possible symbolism, which may represent the conflict in the soldier's minds; they want it to all be over, yet they still are clinging onto old memories and dreams which give them hope.
- "Is it that we're dying?" - Sufferers from extreme hypothermia are said to experience hallucinations. The men may wonder if the images in their mind are real or a sign of dying. Also the personal pronoun, 'we', ensures the reader identifies with the soldiers on a personal level.
Note that the last line is in the form of a rhetorical question, which could be reinforcing the same question in stanza two line five. Also, the abrupt change in meter snaps the reader out of the daydream about spring to the harsh reality of their condition.
- "Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed" - "Slowly" stresses the time taken for anything to happen. The assonant long "'oh" sounds "slowly", "ghosts", "home" and "glozed" emphasises the painful, slow journey.
Owen uses alliterative 'g's in 'ghosts', 'drag', and 'glozed' (the latter being an archaic form of 'glaze'). The line is long and slow, with heavy consonants. This reflects the sadness of the suffering, home-sick soldiers.
"Glimpsing the sunk fires" could perhaps be seen as the 'light at the end of the tunnel', or the light that is supposedly seen before death and exit of the world. The "glimpse" could imply that is only seen briefly, and before they have time to ponder over the other side, they are whisked back in the war to where reality lies.
- "With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there" - The fires are beautiful but, like jewels, offer no warmth or comfort
The colour 'dark-red' could represent dried blood. This symbolises death and the misery of soldiers who have lost their idealism through the hardship of war.
"Crickets jingle there" is a sweet, gentle line, with clicking consonants, suggesting the soldiers have been in the past been close to nature. The word 'jingle' implies childishness and nursery rhymes; some of these soldiers are in their teens.
- "Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed" - This is open to interpretation. One is that the soldiers would not be welcomed home. They are compelled and expected to stay where they are.
Another is that the expectation is that they will have died and families have moved on to other lives.
Note the emphasis on "us", binding the soldiers to each other; their new families. The construction of the sentence is unexpected and the word order inverted, a device known as anastrophe. The effect is to give emphasis to the men.
The 'closed' doors represent the life that is over. The men don't expect to survive the war.
- "We turn back to our dying" - The phrase "turn back to" dying, is ironically casual, as if the men had been interrupted from a card game. Owen expresses this almost nonchalantly as if the soldiers were expecting and waiting to die.
- "Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit" - The sun, like the fire in the previous line, is warm, a contrast to the cold of the previous stanzas.
Owen uses simple one-syllable words and a jogging rhythm, perhaps to suggest a children's song or the simplicity of pre-war life.
The sun is personified as being welcoming and nice, the soldiers crave for the warmth of the sun both physically and mentally as they are looking for a way out of this war.
- "For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid" - Their love of what they believed was "God's invincible spring" is shaky. Their faith has been undermined and they are afraid; no longer trust that spring — a metaphor for life — can come again and bring happiness.
- "Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born" - It's as if they were born to sacrifice their lives by being sent off to fight for their country. The verb "born" is significantly juxtaposed with the idea of death. The line has an uneasy rhythm and is broken by a caesura to emphasise this paradox.
- "For love of God seems dying" - The simple Christianity in which Owen once believed seems inappropriate. They lose faith in God because He is allowing them to die slowly in the cold. The previous lines in the same stanza point to this, in their fear that "invincible" spring is not "true"; not something they can trust.
- "Tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us" - After the hallucinatory conjectures about the love of God and spring, Owen returns us to the present and the nearly dying men.
The word "fasten" emphasises how the frost will entrap the soldiers. Once more there is a reference to "us". The "mud" reinforces the miserable nature of their death, as little more than animals.
- "Shrivelling many hands, and puckering foreheads crisp" - This suggests on a literal level their foreheads frowning in suffering and bewilderment. But also the frost is killing them. The phrase has a choppy rapid rhythm, with percussive consonants, as if the elements are impatient for them to die.
- "The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp" - Owen moves from the 'we' and 'us' of the soldier's point of view to the burying party and a third person narrator. They have died and the practical task of picking up and burying the bodies has to proceed. The reference to 'picks and shovels' is almost brutal. They are also burying their hope and their future.
As well as that, the term "picks and shovels" is prosaic, showing that the dead soldiers are treated without respect; they are placed in a ditch. The burial teams and the soldiers themselves are inured to death.
- "All their eyes are ice" - This could refer to the dead soldiers, whose eyes may be literally frozen in the cold, or it could refer to the burying-party, which is so used to death that its soldiers are numb. Their eyes are glazed and icy, too shocked to convey emotion. Another possibility is that their tears are frozen or that they are frozen in a time frame where 'nothing happens'.
Furthermore, the use of 'their' separates the narrator from his comrades, contrasting with the earlier use of personal pronouns, 'us' and 'we'. This could suggest that the earlier sense of unity has been lost now that they are dead.
Further Analysis:
- "the merciless iced east winds that knive us" - Personification of the weather described as "merciless" and attacking them "knive us" this is unexpected as we expect the fight to be between soldiers.
- "memory of the salient... / Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous" - Sibilance the hissing "s" sound capture the noise of the wind, it sounds both lonely but also biting.
- "Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles." - The man-made weapons are likened through metaphor to natural objects, showing mans war is a cheap imitation of nature.
- "What are we doing here?" - The rhetorical question highlights the hopelessness of soldiers and war.
- "The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow" - Contrast: dawn is meant to be hopeful and positive, not miserable.
- "Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey, / But nothing happens." - Now the rain is personified, nothing happens repeated to emphasise the helplessness of the soldiers who are beyond help.
- "Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence." - Harsh assonance and consonance of "s" and "t" sounds link weather with gunfire and therefore conflict and pain.
- "With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew, / We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance" - Now the snow is described with alliteration to emphasise the "f" sounds and highlight the cold heavy blanketing of the weather. The wind's "nonchalance" implies the weather sees the soldiers as beneath it and weak.
- "We cringe in holes" - Man is animalised, likened to scared animals, rabbits in holes. Showing that before nature man is just an animal.
- "Littered with blossoms" - The sweet image of springtime blossom, signifying renewed life, is juxtaposed with the fear and bleakness of trench warfare.
- "Is it that we are dying?" - The rhetorical question shows the confusion of soldiers. Conditions are so bad they can no longer tell what is normal anymore.
- "With crusted dark-red jewels" - Metaphor: the frozen blood is described as jewels, the poet sees men's lives as valuable and ultimately wasted.
- "For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid; / Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born" - So broken and hurt are the men that they feel abandoned and lose faith in God "our love is made afraid". Contrasts/juxtaposes the battlefield with the Garden of Eden. The tone is one of betrayal and despair. The use of scattered punctuation slows the pace, we can imagine the soldiers finally succumbing to exposure and death.
- "All their eyes are ice" - Metaphor: the ice not only represents coldness but as if the soldiers are dead and empty, without a soul.
- "But nothing happens." - Repetition of the final line emphasises the process doesn't end, the soldiers are frozen in time and hell.
Comparison to London (William Blake):
In both of these poems, people were suffering, in more ways than one. In London, people were getting hurt because of the new laws the government had put in. This is illustrated in the quote "In every cry of every man, / in every cry of fear, / in every voice of every ban". Blake uses repetition to emphasise people's suffering. We can infer from the quote that people are feeling hopeless, pain and misery. The quote also suggests that people are worried about getting hurt. This links to Exposure because the soldiers were constantly waiting to go into battle and get hurt.
The soldiers were suffering in Exposure also. Soldiers were going to war and dying thinking they were helping their country. This is shown in the quote "In the merciless iced east winds that knive us." The personification of the words "winds" and "knive" display that the soldiers were suffering. The quote suggests that the winds were so cold but they fought on anyway because they thought they were helping their country. This links to London because they thought things were going to get better.
Comparison to Remains (Simon Armitage):
Both are about soldiers in wartime.
Both present a first-person narrative.
Both provide graphic images of death and war.
Remains has a faster-paced rhythm, Exposure has a more measured pace, reflecting the way the soldiers are waiting.
Remains is about modern warfare, Exposure is about World War One.
Remains has a structure which disintegrates towards the end, Exposure uses a more regular structure.
Exposure is written in the present tense about an experience that is unfolding. Remains is also written mostly in the present tense, but is about a past experience, showing the lasting trauma of the experience of war for this soldier.