Introduction: • Exposure is a poem written by Wilfred Owen where he describes the horrific effects of war on the soldiers, both on their physical and mental states. He shows that mundane ways of dying are not less tragic than dying from bullets and that nature can kill soldiers as well. • Wilfred Owen was an officer in World War I, who was sent to a hospital because he suffered from "shellshock". There, he met poet Siegfried Sassoon, who played a part in influencing him to write poetry about war and the suffering of soldiers. He later returned to the war, where he was killed. ' ' Opening Statement: • Exposure expresses Owen 's thoughts that the war was not the only aspect that was against the soldiers, nature was also opposing them through …show more content…
Again, the motif of harsh weather conditions is emphasized as nature has become the real enemy of the soldiers • "Stare, snow-dazed" (line 22) shows alliteration and emphasizes the [s] sound which allows readers to hear the sound of the wind and sense the lonely atmosphere the soldiers are in • Words such as "Forgotten dreams" (line 22) show the soldiers reaming of what their lives could have been if they had stayed safe at home • There is slant rhyme when Owen writes "sun-dozed" (line 23) as if reinforcing the fact that the weather is causing the suffering of the soldiers • When Owen writes "Is it that we are dying?" (line 25), he asks a rhetorical question to show the extent of the suffering the soldiers are going through • The sixth stanza shows contrast between the cold, harsh conditions at war and the warm and happy atmosphere at home using words such as "crusted dark-red jewels" (line 27) • Punctuation such as dashes and colons are used to create pauses before and emphasize certain messages that Owen thinks are important. Colons are also used before a statement is further elaborated on. This allows Owen to emphasize on certain messages that he feels are extremely …show more content…
This is also shown when he writes that the soldiers do not believe in spring. It seems that the soldiers believe that they will not survive to see their future • "His frost ' (line 36) shows that everybody has turned their backs on the soldiers, even God and strong diction such as "fasten" (line 36) shows how this mud will not come off the soldiers, as if they will die • Strong and terrifying imagery of frozen bodies is created from words such as "shrivelling" (line 37) and "half-known" (line 39) shows how these bodies of the soldiers can no longer be recognized • The last lines show that even thought lots of soldiers are dying, this has no affect on the war as a whole and bullets have no killed these soldiers, nature killed them. Further, it shows that mundane ways of dying are not less tragic than dying from bullets
Just as the poem is written in a rhyme and rhythm that makes poetry easy to follow, the vivid imagery helps one to picture more easily what is going on in the poem. Owen brilliantly chooses words and phrases that illuminate the scene, making the reader feel as if he is physically in the scene along with the characters. For example, Owen describes that the Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots/ But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;/ Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots/ Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind (Gioia 782). A feeling of sadness and pity is felt as one hears the previous words. It is almost as if the scene of the soldiers trudging through the battlefield is being painted for the reader to actually visually ...
Wilfred Owen portrays the soldiers/man are being ‘exposed’ to harsh weather conditions on the battlefield and how dangerous it was for the soldiers to live throughout the war. This is illustrated in the following quotation “we only know war lasts, rain soa...
To draw into the poet’s world, the poet must draw relations between them, including the reader, making them feel what the poet feels, thinking what the poet thinks. Wilfred Owen does this very creatively and very effectively, in both of his poems, Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori and Anthem of Doomed Youth, who is seen as an idol to many people today, as a great war poet, who expresses his ideas that makes the reader feel involved in the moment, feeling everything that he does. His poems describe the horror of war, and the consequences of it, which is not beneficial for either side. He feels sorrow and anger towards the war and its victims, making the reader also feel the same.
Owen then moves on to tell us how even in their weak human state, the soldiers march on, until the enemy fires gas shells at them. This sudden situation causes the soldiers to hurriedly put their gas masks on, but one soldier did not put it on in time. Owen tells us the condition the soldier is in, and how, even in the time to come, he could not forget the images that it left him with. In the last stanza he tells the readers that if we had seen what he had seen then we would never encourage the next generation to fight in a war. Owen uses imagery constantly to convey the conditions and feelings experienced during this war.
Wilfred Owen emphasises the condition of the men in order to show the reader the effect that the war had on the soldiers. He often compares the young soldiers to elderly people:
Owen as a young soldier held the same romantic view on war as majority of the other naive soldiers who thought that war would be an exciting adventure. The documentary extract illustrates how markedly Owen’s perspective of the war changed, as noted in a letter to his mother while he was still in the front lines: “But extra for me, there is the universal perversion of ugliness, the distortion of the dead ... that is what saps the soldierly spirit.” In ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, Owen’s change of heart is evident through the irony of the poem title and the ending line “The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est, Pro patria mori.”, an allusion to the Roman axiom made famous by Horace, which translates to “The old Lie; It is sweet and right to die for your country.”. The line depicts Owen’s realisation that the horrific nature of war through human conflict is not sweet and right at all, rather, it is appalling and “bitter as the cud” as death is always present on the battlefield. Additionally, Owen indirectly responds to Jessie Pope’s poetry, a pro-war poetess, through the reference “My friend, you would not tell with such high zest… The old lie…”, further highlighting his changed perspective towards the war which has been influenced
It is evident that the socio-cultural context in which Wilfred Owen operated had a powerful impact upon his poetic motivation and the messages he conveyed through his work. Before exploring Wilfred Owen’s work we first must understand the society that Wilfred Owen lived in, to be able to really understand appreciate his poems and their impact on society. At the time in which he operated, Britain’s public opinion on warfare and conflicts were astonishingly positive, especially in the early stages of WW1. These false perception on war led the vast majority of male citizens to perceive war recruitment as an opportunity to set off on ‘terrific adventures’ and earn immense amounts of honour for their families and nation. Government propaganda meant that soldiers believed that they were gathering fame and fortune in the name of Great Britain. This cruel and false perception of warfare which in turn led to a steady rate of volunteers for the war and included Wilfred Owen himself. The men who did not go and fight for their nations were perceived by society as cowards as
In ‘Anthem of Doomed Youth’ Owen shows another version of the suffering- the mourning of the dead soldiers. When Owen asks “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”, his rhetorical question compares the soldiers to cattle as they die and suffer undignified. Owen uses this extended metaphor to confront us with the truth, that there are too many fatalities in war. As such, the soldier’s deaths are compared to livestock, to emphasise their poor treatment and question our perspective about soldiers dying with honour. With an overwhelming death toll of over 9 million during WWI, Owen depicts how the soldier’s die with the repetition of “Only the...” to emphasise the sounds of war that kills soldiers in the alliteration ‘rifles’ rapid rattle.’ Owen also illustrates the conditions that the soldiers died in and how they were not given a proper funeral in the cumulation ‘no prayers nor bells,/ nor any voice of mourning.’ Owen painfully reminds us that we have become complacent with the deaths of soldiers, seeing them as a necessary sacrifice during human conflict. Thus, Owen shows us what we have overlooked about war, that is, that it brings endless death and long-lasting grief to the surviving soldiers and the people around
Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” makes the reader acutely aware of the impact of war. The speaker’s experiences with war are vivid and terrible. Through the themes of the poem, his language choices, and contrasting the pleasant title preceding the disturbing content of the poem, he brings attention to his views on war while during the midst of one himself. Owen uses symbolism in form and language to illustrate the horrors the speaker and his comrades go through; and the way he describes the soldiers, as though they are distorted and damaged, parallels how the speaker’s mind is violated and haunted by war.
The poem is divided into three sections with each part dealing with a different stage of the experience. In the first stanza, Owen describes the state the soldiers are in. The first line states that the platoon is “Bent double, like old beggars” (1). This gives the reader a vision that they are exhausted and compares them to the look of beggars on the street, who often times, look very ragged and shabby. The line “coughing like o...
Considered the leading English poet of the First World War, Owen is remembered for realistic poems depicting the horrors of war, which were inspired by his experiences at the Western Front in 1916 and 1917. Owen considered the true subject of his poems to be "the pity of war," and attempted to present the true horror and realities of battle and its effects on the human spirit. His unique voice, which is less passionate and idealistic than those of other war poets, is complemented by his unusual and experimental style of writing. He is recognized as the first English poet to successfully use pararhyme, in which the rhyme is made through altered vowel sounds. Owen’s distinct way of both writing and reading poems led to influence other poets in the 1920s and 1930s.
It goes through the worst parts of the war and describes them in detail. The horrors in these descriptions contradict the glorification of the war The poem consists of four stanzas, the first describes the soldiers, the second a gas attack, the third Owen’s nightmares and last an accusation to the people back home. Owen’s poems are suffused with the horror of battle, and yet finely structured and innovative. The first stanza sets the scene as it describes the conditions the men fought in and their feelings. Owen immediately shocks the readers by describing the young soldiers as ‘bent double’ emphasising their exhaustion and the way they slump along, deformed by fatigue, I think this is an effective simile because no one back home will be expecting their proud soldiers described as beggars.
The tone is bitter and intense in a realistic way. It is achieved by the vivid and gruesome images in the poem. Wilfred Owen 's use of imagery in this poem is by depicting emotional, nightmarish, and vivid words to capture the haunting encounters of WWI that soldiers went through. In the first stanza, Owen depicts his fellow soldiers struggling through the battlefield, but their terrible health conditions prevent them from their strong actions in the war. When Owen says, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed, coughing like hags” (lines 1-2). This provides the readers with an unexpected view and appearance of soldiers, as they usually picture as strong, noble, and brawny-looking men. Soldiers sacrifice themselves to fight for their country and are exhausted from their unhealthy lifestyle. In lines 7-8, “Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots of gas-shells dropping softly behind,” they have lost the facade of humanity and their bodies are all wearied and weak on their march. This reveals a glimpse at the soldiers’ actions, as well as inferring to a psychological effect of the war. Then in line 5, “Men marched asleep,” the author is making abnormality to be one of the major purposes of the war, that it
... Instead of idealizing war in a romantic way, war poets such as Wilfred Owen aimed to expose gruesome truths about these wars and how they impacted lives. It points a finger and criticizes the governments and authorities that wage these wars but don’t fight in them themselves but rather watch as lives are lost. It exposes propaganda for what it is, a tool for brainwashing. It puts into question the notion of dying for ones country to be noble, honourable and admirable.
Sassoon shows many examples of how the soldier in this poem gets pulled back into war-like terrors by meaningless things. The soldier is simply sitting in his home yet gets flashbacks of war and it haunts him. In this poem Sassoon is using a soldier as the example of repression as someone who has experienced war and the impacts it has on life after. “The poetic evolution related directly to Sassoon 's war experiences was initially gradual. His poetry became more serious and evocative in the early days of the war, but continued to inhabit the fatal logic of soldierly glory in poetic uniform” Avi Matalon claims (30). Poetry was influenced greatly by World War I and left poets creating new pieces that they never would have imagined