Wilfred Owen: 'Exposure' - Mr Bruff Analysis

Summary

This video script offers an in-depth analysis of Wilfred Owen's poem 'Exposure', focusing on its rhyme scheme, pararhyme, refrain, personification, sibilants, religious imagery, intertextual references, caesura, and more. It explores Owen's background, the poem's context within WWI, and its powerful depiction of soldiers' suffering and the futility of war. The analysis also discusses the poem's structure, highlighting the contrast between intense anticipation and the ultimate letdown of 'nothing happening', reflecting the soldiers' experience of waiting in vain.

Takeaways

• 📜 'Exposure' is considered Wilfred Owen's most polished and impressive poem, reflecting his extensive drafting and redrafting efforts.
• 🎨 The poem utilizes various poetic techniques such as rhyme scheme, pararhyme, refrain, personification, sibilants, religious imagery, intertextual references, and caesura.
• 🖋️ Owen's biographical background, including his initial pursuit of a church career and his admiration for John Keats, influenced his poetry.
• 🌐 'Exposure' is set against the backdrop of World War I, challenging the romanticized views of war prevalent before Owen's time.
• ❄️ The poem focuses on the harsh weather conditions faced by soldiers in the trenches, emphasizing the war between soldiers and nature rather than between soldiers themselves.
• 🔄 Owen employs a repetitive structure in 'Exposure' to reflect the soldiers' ongoing, futile wait for action amidst the trenches.
• 🔁 The rhyme scheme 'ABBAC' and the use of pararhyme contribute to a sense of incompleteness and tension, mirroring the soldiers' experiences.
• 🔊 The poem's refrain 'but nothing happens' underscores the futility and stagnation of trench warfare.
• 🌉 Owen's use of intertextual references, particularly to John Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale', contrasts the joy of nature in Keats' work with the horrors faced by soldiers in war.
• 🏠 The poem's ending, which loops back to its beginning, reinforces the theme of futility and the lack of resolution in the soldiers' suffering.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the analysis in the video script?

The main focus of the analysis is on Wilfred Owen's poem 'Exposure', with particular attention to its rhyme scheme, pararhyme, refrain, personification, sibilants, religious imagery, intertextual references, caesura, and more.

What are some of the poetic techniques discussed in the script?

The script discusses techniques such as rhyme scheme, pararhyme, refrain, personification, sibilants, religious imagery, intertextual references, and caesura.

Why is 'Exposure' considered Wilfred Owen's most polished poem?

'Exposure' is considered Wilfred Owen's most polished poem because he spent a significant amount of time drafting and redrafting it, resulting in a rich and complex work.

What is the significance of the poem's title 'Exposure'?

The title 'Exposure' refers not only to the exposure to harsh weather conditions and the threat of enemy soldiers but also symbolizes the exposure of the truth about the reality of war to the British public.

What is the role of the weather in 'Exposure'?

In 'Exposure', the weather is portrayed as a more significant threat than enemy soldiers, with the poem highlighting the soldiers' suffering due to the cold and snow.

How does Wilfred Owen's background influence his poetry?

Owen's background, including his initial pursuit of a career in the church and his admiration for John Keats, influenced his poetry by imbuing it with a sense of moral conflict and a deep appreciation for poetic craft.

What is the significance of the refrain 'but nothing happens' in the poem?

The refrain 'but nothing happens' emphasizes the futility and stagnation of war, as well as the soldiers' constant state of alertness with no resolution or action.

How does the rhyme scheme 'ABBAC' contribute to the poem's theme?

The 'ABBAC' rhyme scheme contributes to the poem's theme by reflecting the anticipation and unfulfilled expectations of battle, with the final line breaking the pattern to mirror the lack of resolution in the soldiers' experiences.

What is the role of intertextual references in 'Exposure'?

Intertextual references in 'Exposure', such as those to John Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale', serve to highlight contrasts between Owen's war experiences and the Romantic idealization of nature, emphasizing the harsh realities of war.

What is the effect of personification in the poem?

Personification in 'Exposure' gives human characteristics to the weather, emphasizing its deadliness and creating a sense of war between the soldiers and nature.

How does the use of sibilance in 'Exposure' contribute to its atmosphere?

Sibilance, through the repetition of 'ss' and 'sh' sounds, creates a hissing sound that evokes a sense of danger and unease, mirroring the constant threat faced by the soldiers.

Outlines

00:00

📜 Introduction to Wilfred Owen's 'Exposure'

The video begins with an introduction to the analysis of Wilfred Owen's poem 'Exposure', recognized as Owen's most refined and impressive work. The speaker intends to focus on elements often overlooked, such as rhyme scheme, pararhyme, refrain, personification, sibilants, religious imagery, intertextual references, caesura, and more. Wilfred Owen's biography is briefly touched upon, highlighting his initial pursuit of a career in the church, his admiration for John Keats, and his evolution as a poet. The context of World War I poetry is also discussed, emphasizing the shift from glorifying war to depicting its harsh realities, which Owen's work represents.

05:01

🌨️ The Harsh Reality of War in 'Exposure'

This section delves into the poem 'Exposure', illustrating the suffering of soldiers in the trenches due to severe weather conditions. The speaker discusses how the poem contrasts with traditional war poetry by focusing on the battle against nature rather than enemy combatants. The analysis also touches on Owen's use of language and structure to evoke empathy for the soldiers' experiences, their helplessness, and the pointlessness of their suffering. A line-by-line interpretation of the poem is offered, with an emphasis on the complexity and ambiguity of certain verses.

10:03

🏠 Longing for Home and the Futility of War

The speaker continues the analysis by examining the soldiers' longing for home and the realization of the war's futility. The poem's title 'Exposure' is discussed in a broader context, suggesting it refers not only to the physical exposure to the elements but also to the revelation of war's truth to the British public. The analysis of the poem's structure highlights how Owen uses a pattern of building tension followed by an anticlimactic resolution to mirror the soldiers' experiences of waiting and the letdown of inaction.

15:04

🔄 The Repetitive and Futile Nature of War

This part of the analysis focuses on the poem's rhyme scheme 'ABBAC' and its significance in reflecting the unachieved anticipation of battle. The repetitive nature of the rhyme scheme throughout the poem underscores the repetitive and futile situation of the soldiers. The use of 'pararhyme' is also discussed, which adds to the poem's sense of unease and incompleteness, mirroring the soldiers' denied satisfaction in battle.

20:06

🕊️ Intertextual Links and Biblical Imagery

The analysis explores the intertextual link between Owen's 'Exposure' and Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale', suggesting Owen's allusion to Keats as a commentary on the purpose of poetry in the face of war's horrors. Biblical imagery is also identified, particularly in the poem's depiction of distant gunfire as a 'dull rumour of some other war', which is linked to biblical end-of-the-world narratives. The extensive use of personification to emphasize the deadliness of nature over enemy soldiers is also discussed.

25:07

🐍 Sibilance and the Cyclical Nature of War

This section discusses the use of sibilance in the poem, creating a sinister atmosphere that reflects the constant threat faced by the soldiers. The analysis also touches on caesura and its role in creating a sense of division between home and the battlefield. The video concludes with a reflection on the poem's ending, which reinforces the futility of war and the soldiers' ongoing suffering.

Keywords

💡Exposure

Exposure in the context of the poem refers to the harsh weather conditions faced by soldiers in the trenches during World War I, as well as the exposure to the enemy. It also metaphorically represents the revelation of the true, grim reality of war to the British public, contrasting the previously glorified image of war. The poem 'Exposure' by Wilfred Owen captures the soldiers' suffering and questions the purpose of their ordeal, encapsulated in the line 'For love of God seems dying.'

💡Rhyme Scheme

The rhyme scheme 'ABBAC' is a structural element in poetry where the first four lines establish a pattern that is broken in the fifth line, reflecting the anticipation of battle that never fully materializes. This pattern is consistent throughout Owen's poem, mirroring the soldiers' repetitive and futile situation. For example, the first stanza rhymes 'winds that knive us' with 'us', 'silent' with 'it', and 'salient' with 'ent', breaking the pattern with 'But nothing happens.'

💡Pararhyme

Pararhyme is a poetic technique where words at the end of lines share the same consonant sounds but different vowel sounds, creating a sense of tension and incompleteness. In 'Exposure', words like 'knive us' and 'nervous' are pararhymes, contributing to the poem's overall atmosphere of unease and the soldiers' unmet expectations.

💡Personification

Personification is a literary device where human qualities are attributed to non-human entities. Owen uses this technique to emphasize the harshness of the natural elements, such as 'winds that knive us', suggesting that nature itself is as deadly as the enemy. This device helps to convey the soldiers' struggle against not only the enemy but also the elements.

💡Sibilance

Sibilance is the use of 's' and similar hissing sounds to create a specific atmosphere or to mimic natural sounds. In 'Exposure', phrases like 'sudden successive flights of bullets streaked the silence' use sibilance to evoke the sound of bullets and the shivering of soldiers, enhancing the poem's portrayal of the chilling war environment.

💡Caesura

Caesura is a pause in the middle of a line of poetry, often created by punctuation. Owen uses caesura to reflect the division between soldiers at the front and their homes, as seen in 'Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed,' which interrupts the flow to mirror the disruption of war.

💡Intertextual References

Intertextual references are allusions to other texts that enrich the meaning of the current work. Owen's reference to John Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale' in the opening line 'Our brains ache' contrasts the joyous ache in Keats' poem with the pain of war, highlighting the darker side of human nature and the purpose of poetry to reflect reality.

💡Futility

Futility is a central theme in Owen's poetry, reflecting the senselessness and pointlessness of war. The refrain 'but nothing happens' at the end of each stanza underscores the lack of progress or achievement in the soldiers' ordeal, emphasizing the futility of their suffering.

💡Religious Imagery

Religious imagery is used to contrast the soldiers' grim reality with the ideals of faith and divine protection. The line 'For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid' questions the presence of God in the face of war, suggesting that faith is challenged by the horrors experienced by soldiers.

💡Trench Warfare

Trench warfare was a characteristic of World War I, involving long periods of waiting in trenches under harsh conditions. Owen's poem captures the experience of soldiers in trench warfare, where they endure the elements and the psychological strain of anticipation without significant combat, as reflected in the poem's structure and content.

💡Ambiguity

Ambiguity in literature allows for multiple interpretations, enriching the reader's engagement with the text. The final line 'For love of God seems dying' is ambiguous, inviting questions about the dying love of God for humanity or the necessity of dying for God's love, reflecting the complexity of war's impact on faith and morality.

Highlights

The poem 'Exposure' by Wilfred Owen is considered his most polished and poetically impressive work.

Owen's focus on the rhyme scheme, pararhyme, refrain, personification, sibilants, religious imagery, intertextual references, caesura, and more in 'Exposure'.

Wilfred Owen's background, including his brief pursuit of a career in the church and his admiration for John Keats.

The context of World War I poetry and how Owen was a revolutionary war poet, contrasting with the patriotic verse of his time.

Owen's experiences in trench warfare and how they are depicted in 'Exposure', focusing on the harsh weather conditions and the soldiers' suffering.

The poem's structure, designed to make readers feel the intensity of waiting and the anticlimactic nature of war.

The significance of the poem's title 'Exposure', reflecting not only the exposure to the elements but also the exposure of the truth about war.

The use of pararhyme in 'Exposure' to create a sense of unease and incompleteness, mirroring the soldiers' experience.

The poem's rhyme scheme 'ABBAC' and how it reflects the building momentum and anticipation that never comes to fruition.

The intertextual references to John Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale' and the contrast between the two poets' views on nature and poetry.

The personification of weather in 'Exposure' to emphasize its deadliness compared to enemy soldiers.

The use of sibilance in the poem to create a sinister atmosphere and reflect the constant threat faced by the soldiers.

The role of caesura in 'Exposure', creating a pause that reflects the division caused by war.

The ambiguous nature of the final stanza and its implications about the soldiers' purpose and the state of God's love.

The cyclical structure of the poem, ending with 'but nothing happens', emphasizing the futility of war.

The video's comprehensive analysis, providing a deep understanding of Owen's techniques and the themes of 'Exposure'.

Transcripts

Hello everybody and welcome to this video, part of the ongoing poetry analysis.

And, today, we're going to analyse the Wilfred Owen poem ‘Exposure’.

Now, it's widely agreed that ‘Exposure’ is Wilfred Owen's most polished, most poetically

impressive poem.

He certainly spent a long time drafting and redrafting it and, as a result, there's so

much you could say about this poem.

So, in this analysis I'll try to look at some of the things which are often overlooked.

My focus is going to be on the rhyme scheme, pararhyme, the refrain, personification, sibilants,

religious imagery, intertextual references, caesura, and more.

So, before I start, just to say that everything that I go through in this video could be picked

up in my guide to poetry available at https://mrbruff.com rather than you have to write everything down.

So let's begin by talking about the poet Wilfred Owen.

Now, as always, we only want to look at the biographical details which relate to the poem

that we're studying.

There's a lot to do with Owen and Sassoon and how they met and work together, but none

of that is really essential for this poem.

So, we're going to skip over those details and look at just a few things which I think

really help us to understand ‘Exposure’.

A little bit about Wilfred Owen.

He was born in 1893.

He joined the British Army in 1915 and died in battle on November the 4th 1918, just a

week before the war was declared over.

He originally pursued a career in the church, but he gave up on that.

And there's a mixture of ideas of why he gave up but, ultimately, it seems that he just

felt that the church didn't look after people like it was supposed to.

There was some hypocrisy in the church, and he left the church.

He was an avid fan of the poet John Keats (1795 to 1821).

And this is important because I think some people sort of assume that Owen began writing

poetry in the wall and “wasn't he amazing?”

But that's not the case.

He was already writing a lot of poetry from childhood and, of course, it's his World War

I poetry that we all look out now.

But he was avid poet, a huge fan of John Keats, and there are some references in this poem

to John Keats.

Let's just talk briefly about the context – the World War I poetry.

Today, when we look at war poetry I think we can think of it all as being the same.

But in his time Wilfred Owen was a revolutionary war poet.

You see, before Owen, war poetry focused on patriotic verse which praised the bravery

of the soldiers, a glorified battle.

And you can think of Tennyson’s ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ as being that kind

of poem, although there is some sort of subtle criticism in that poem too.

But it's important to understand the sort of British attitude to war in 1914.

You see, the public hadn't experienced a major war for over a hundred years, and war sort

of became something of myth.

It was thought of as something that brave people did.

It was honorable; It was exciting.

And Owen is very keen to dispel this myth, to expose – as you think about the title

– the reality of war.

You see, Owen didn't believe like many war poets before him of the “glory, honour,

might, majesty, dominion, or power” of war.

He believed that war was pointless, and this is the recurring theme throughout his poetry

– that war is futile.

And as we've already seen, Ted Hughes echoes the work of Owen in his own World War I poem,

‘Bayonet Charge’.

So ‘Exposure’ focuses on Owen’s experiences in trench warfare.

In November 1917 he wrote to his mother, “The marvel is that we did not all die of cold.

As a matter of fact, only one of my party actually froze to death before he could go

be got back, but I'm not able to tell how many have ended in hospital.”

So, basically, the poem ‘Exposure’ describes the way a group of soldiers in a trench suffer

in the harsh weather conditions, dreaming of home, questioning why they are there, thinking

about their reasons for being in the war, what they're doing, and whether it's worthwhile.

Very interesting war poem in the sense that it doesn't actually contain any sort of battle

or war between soldiers.

The war is between the soldiers and the weather conditions.

There are other Owen poems such as ‘Spring Offensive’ and ‘Futility’ which explore

this idea of nature as enemy, and it's one of Owen’s recurring themes.

And Owen uses language structure and form to basically help the reader empathize and

understand what it was like to wait long days and long nights for action which never appears,

only to be slowly killed by the harsh weather conditions.

Now, throughout, we need to look for the poet’s deliberate techniques used to make us feel

like the soldiers felt themselves.

Not only, of course, that the soldiers are helpless but their suffering is pointless

and futile.

So, with this in mind, the title ‘Exposure’, we can understand from the context, could

actually refer to not just the exposure to the weather conditions, not just the sort

of threat of being exposed to the enemy soldiers, but also the fact that the poem and all of

the poems of Wilfred Owen actually refer to the exposure of the truth for the British

public of the reality of war.

Owen is saying, “Look, war is not glorious.

It's not brave and honourable and sort of romantic.

It's awful, and I'm going to expose the reality of the war to you.”

Now, what I'm going to do to begin with is give you a line-by-line translation of the

poem.

But if you don't want that, if you think now I understand what the poem means, then click

the screen now and it will take you straight to the analysis.

In terms of line-by-line translation, this is a very complex poem.

There are one or two verses that really do cause some debate and controversy about what

they mean.

And I have looked at over a dozen books to do with this poem to try and get a really

good idea of just some of the more sort of difficult ambiguous sections.

So, I'll talk to you about the meaning of the poem but, as I've said in other videos,

the meaning of the poem, the sort of literal plot, the storyline of the poem is not actually

the most important thing.

We can disagree on what's going on.

It's the poet's use of language structure and form that we really need to focus on.

Okay.

So let's have a look at verse one.

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 memories of the salient…

Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,

But nothing happens.

So what's being said here is, our brains are aching in this freezing cold wind which is

hitting us.

We're tired but we stay awake on watch.

Flares flying through the sky confuse our memories of the position we're in.

A salient is a position on the frontline which juts out into enemy territory.

We're worried by the lack of sound.

We whisper; we’re scared; but nothing happens.

And then, on to verse two:

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, what's being explained here, they're watching, they're hearing the wind as it tugs on the

wire – the barbed wire – like the twitching agonies of men.

And then, to the north, they can hear guns far off, a long way away as if it's in a totally

different war.

And then, there's this question – 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.

So, in other words, the depressing morning arrives and we know that war goes on and the

rain gets us wet.

Morning gets her weapons ready, attacking us again with freezing cold rain.

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.

So, there's some gunfire, some shooting which breaks up the silence.

But that gunfire, that shooting, is not as dangerous as the snow which is falling on

us.

We watch the snowflakes floating around, 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?

So here's where it gets a little bit tricky.

So, basically, the flakes of snow are falling on our faces, and we're cringing in our trenches

and, then, we're staring in a daze at nothing and we slip out of consciousness, beginning

to dream of sun, flowers, and birds.

Are we 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.

So, he's talking here about going back home to Britain; seeing the fires at home which

are fading away because there's no one there now to make the fire; hearing the sounds of

the countryside; and, then, the mice are enjoying the empty houses; and everything's closed

and shut up because all the soldiers are away at war.

And we go back to our dying.

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.

Now, this is the most ambiguous stanza, and the author Douglas Kerr helped me out with

a couple of details really interesting.

Essentially, what's being said here is, because we believe that war and going to war is the

only way to ensure that loving domestic life will go on and that children will continue

to be brought up happy, healthy, and protected, we're doing this.

We're at battle.

We used to think of the return of spring as inevitable but, now, in our concern for our

loved ones, we're no longer confident that springtime and happiness will be renewed.

And that's why we're doing this job of being sold just willingly.

Perhaps that's what we were born for because the love of God seems to be dying.

And that's ambiguous – the final line.

Does it mean that God's love for us is dying or does it mean that you know the right thing

to do is to die?

And I'll talk a bit more about that line later.

But, thank you to Douglas Kerr for that because that really was the trickiest stanza there.

Tonight, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,

Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.

The burying party, picks and shovels in the shaking grasp,

Pause over half-known faces.

All their eyes are ice, But nothing happens.

So, really, what's it saying?

Well, tonight's going to be another night of freezing-cold temperatures as the ice and

the frost sticks to us and freezes us, and those soldiers who are in charge of burying

their comrades with their shovels in their hands will look over the faces of the dead,

the frozen, but nothing happens.

Structure Now let's have a look at something to do with

the structure of the poem.

Owen wants readers to understand the intensity of waiting during battle and, then, the anticlimactic

letdown that comes when nothing happens.

You see, we often watch war films and think, “Intense battles, that's really sort of

high-energy,” but, of course, a lot of war is spent waiting, where nothing happens.

In World War I with a lot of trench warfare, there was a lot of time waiting soldiers felt

that they were gone for years and years of just waiting around with nothing happening.

And during all of that time, soldiers lived on adrenaline.

So they were always highly strung as if something was going to happen.

But, of course, that's what leads to combat stress reaction to shell shock.

This kind of non-stop high adrenaline.

So it's not just that nothing happens.

It’s that the soldiers are on full alert with heightened senses, ready to go at any

second, knowing that something could happen at any moment.

So, to help the reader to empathize with this experience, Owen structures each stanza in

the same way.

We'll look at the first stanza, but they all follow this pattern.

Each one begins with a blunt and powerful sentence.

Here, we have – ‘Our brains ache in the merciless iced east winds that knive us.’

Very kind of emotive with ‘merciless’, with ‘knive us’, and the ‘ache’ there.

And, then, that opening sentence is followed by highly emotive vocabulary choices – ‘wearied’,

‘low drooping’, ‘confused’, ‘worried’, ‘curious’, ‘nervous’.

And this heightens the tension and basically builds up to this sort of climactic moment

of energy.

But, crucially, after dramatically heightening the tension, each stanza ends with an anticlimactic

line where very little takes place.

And in many of the verses, it is this final line – ‘but nothing happens’.

So this is a three-part structure found in each stanza.

It begins with a blunt and powerful sentence, then there's lots of highly emotive vocabulary

choices but an anticlimactic final line.

And Owen wants his reader to empathize with how the soldiers felt.

Everything is tense and seemingly building to a climax, only to end up being nothing.

The eighth verse repetition as well reflects that emotional rollercoaster the soldiers

were going through on a daily basis.

They were exhausted.

Day after day after day after day, this is what would happen.

They would be on edge.

They would be tense, thinking that they were about to be thrust into battle.

They were freezing, and they were suffering.

And nothing ever happened.

Now, the rhyme scheme is quite interesting in this poem.

So, it's ‘ABBAC’, and you can see what that means – the first line rhymes with

the fourth; the second rhymes with the third; and the final line doesn't rhyme with any

of the previous lines.

And there are a few things you can say about the rhyme scheme.

So, the way in which the first four lines establish a rhyme pattern, only for that to

be broken down in the final line, reflects the building momentum and anticipation of

battle which is never realized.

So, essentially, the rhyme scheme backs up the structure of each stanza like I've just

talked about.

And the rhyme scheme, as we know, stays this way throughout the entire poem.

Now, it's quite interesting to think about just how long this poem is.

And that's why we're already 16 minutes in and quite early into our analysis – because

there is so much that actually just takes place in this poem.

And the rhyme scheme stays this way throughout the whole poem with its repetitive nature

reflecting the repetitive and futile situation that the soldiers are in.

Just as the poem stays the same, so does the situation for the soldiers.

The poet employs what is known as ‘pararhyme’.

And this is where – and this is quite a complex thing; it’s very clever – two

end-of-line words contain the same consonant sounds but not the same vowels.

So if we look at these four lines – ‘knive us’, ‘silent’, ‘salient’, and ‘nervous’

– now, what's going on here?

We can see that ‘knive us’ is a pararhyme with ‘nervous’.

The consonant sounds ‘nuh’ and ‘ss’ are the same, even though the vowel sounds

which we have as the ‘i’ and the ‘uh’ are different.

The use of pararhyme basically gives the poem a permanent sense of being nervously on edge,

sort of incomplete, not quite right.

And the soldiers are ultimately denied the satisfaction that would come with full rhyme.

The rhyme is forced to be incomplete, imperfect.

And this perfection and closure of full rhyme is denied the poem just as the perfection

and closure of the situation in the war is denied the soldiers.

Now, if we look at the final lines of each verse, because of the strict rhyme scheme

which we have with the first four lines of each stanza having this ‘ABBA’ rhyme scheme,

the fifth line, because it actually doesn't fit that rhyme scheme, it stands out.

So, basically, it's quite interesting to look at.

Well, not only what does the poet do but what don't they do?

So when the line doesn't rhyme with anything, why is that?

And the final lines are really important.

So if we look at the final lines of the final four verses, we have – ‘What are we doing

here?’

‘Is it that we're dying?’

‘We turn back to our dying’, ‘For love of God is dying’.

And what's interesting here is how these stanza endings relate to each other.

The second one – ‘Is it that we're dying?’

– actually answers the question, ‘What are we doing here?’

And then, we have this third and final one which is a response to this.

So, essentially, the poet is asking, “What are we doing here?

Are we dying?”

We're focusing on dying for the love of God is dying.

Now, as I said earlier, the final line is deliberately ambiguous.

But, knowing how Owen had abandoned religion, it's interesting to think, “Well, is he

actually saying something religious here?

Is he saying something about God?” because we know that he had rejected the church.

So we could read the line to suggest that people are losing their religious beliefs

when exposed to the horrors of war.

And many people did feel that the horrors of war challenged their belief in God causing

them to ultimately question, “How can there be a God in a world where there's so much

evil and suffering?”

In another of Owen’s poems ‘Greater Love’ he writes ‘God seems not to care.’

So, that sort of backs up the idea of war causing mankind to question the existence

of God.

But there is another interpretation of this word ‘dying’.

The ‘dying’ could be a reference to Christ’s death on the cross.

You see, the Christian belief is that Jesus came to the world to die for our sins, to

redeem us, and forgive us.

And Owen makes this likeness here between the soldiers and Christ, ultimately saying

that the soldiers are Christ-like characters.

They sacrificially die to save others.

And, of course, this is the ideology behind war – that soldiers fight so that civilians

that can be free.

I talked earlier about how Owen was a big fan of John Keats.

Now, we saw in ‘Bayonet Charge’ – there’s a video on that on my channel – that Ted

Hughes mirrored the opening of ‘Bayonet Charge’ on the Owen poem ‘Spring Offensive’.

And Owen does the same in ‘Exposure’.

His opening line mirrors that of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ by John Keats.

Now, there are lots of similarities between the work of John Keats and this poem.

Lots of assonance, lots of particular poetic techniques, the fact that both poems are eight

verses in length.

But the main thing I want to look at is the way that we have ‘Ode to a Nightingale’

with its opening line – ‘My heart aches’ – and that clearly links to the opening

line of ‘Exposure’ – ‘Our brains ache’.

Now, what do we know?

Well, we know that Owen was a huge fan of Keats.

But why does he have this intertextual linking?

Is it just a fan showing his appreciation?

Well, not really.

See, Keats was a Romantic poet.

He used imagery of nature to explore human emotion, and we could say that Owen is highlighting

the darker side of this, where the natural world of a frost and crusted battlefield can

tell us something about humankind and its inherent capacity for evil.

In the Keats poem, his heart was aching with happiness as he listened to the singing of

a bird.

But for Owen and his fellow soldiers, it's their heads which ache.

And Keats was able to become numb through sharing in the joy of the songbird, whereas

Owen and the soldiers are numb through the bitter cold.

So what is the tone of this literary allusion?

Well, Douglas Kerr calls it a provocation, and he made a really good point which is that

the quarrel is not so much over the nature of nature.

Keats finds nature lovely; Owen finds it brutal.

And that's just a very simplistic reference to make, but actually what's being pointed

out here is about the nature of poetry, and what a poem should be, and what a poem should

be about.

You see, Keats was Owen’s first model of what a poet should be.

And what he had learned from Keats was that poem should be beautiful.

Beauty is truth and so on.

But, in 1917 after his war experience and after reading Sassoon, Owen had changed his

mind and saw that, sometimes, a poem has to deal with ugliness and horror.

All a poet can do is warn, and that is why the true poet must be truthful.

So it's not really a question of whether nature is cruel or not, but a question of what poetry

is for.

So we can see the allusion to the Keats poem is Owen’s way of saying, “Look.

What is poetry about?

If you witness evil, you've got to express that evil in poetry.”

Very interesting.

There's also some biblical imagery in the poem when Owen describes how the distant sound

of gunfire is like a dull rumour of some other war.

He's deliberately referencing biblical writings concerning the end of the world.

In the Gospel of Matthew chapter 24, Jesus is talking about the end of the world, whether

people will be able to predict when it's coming and say, “Oh no.

These are the signs it's coming.”

Jesus says, “You will hear of wars and rumours of wars.”

So look at that.

Owen says, ‘… like a dull rumour of some other war’.

Jesus says, “You will hear of wars and rumours of wars.”

It's definitely a religious link there to the Bible.

Owen is probably making the point that this situation they're in feels like the end of

the world has arrived for the poor soldiers.

There's a lot of personification in the poem.

Remember, what Owen is trying to do is to highlight how weather is more dangerous than

– at one point he even calls them – ‘the less deadly bullets’.

So, if you're trying to say that weather is dangerous, then personification is a great

technique.

And we see numerous examples of a personification where human attributes are given to the weather

which is, of course, not human.

So we have ‘winds that knive us’.

You know the wind can't really knife you, but it does in the poem.

The gusts are ‘mad’; dawn is ‘massing’; air is shuddering; and the snowflakes are

‘fingering’ the faces.

So, all of this personification is really important.

If a poet does something once, it's not necessarily a huge thing to analyze.

But if they're doing something time and time again, we need to think about why is that.

And, of course, this overwhelming use of personification presents the idea that nature is more deadly

than enemy soldiers, and Owen takes it one step further when he uses military imagery

to describe the rain.

He describes the rain, says that it attacks once more in ranks.

And, clearly, there's very little difference between the enemy soldiers and the weather

to Owen and his comrades.

Both are slowly but surely killing them.

There's some sibilance in the poem and, hopefully, you spotted it as I read it.

Sibilance, the repetition of soft ‘ss’, ‘sh’ sounds.

It creates a hissing sound, so we've got ‘sudden successive flights of bullets streaked the

silence’.

And in the same verse, ‘pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces’.

Now, sibilance is one of those things that there are sort of different levels of analysis.

And none of them are wrong.

You can come up with your own, and I would love you in the comment section to put an

analysis of what does the sibilance achieve here.

Now, this verse, this stanza is describing when they hear the gunshot, so you could say

that the ‘ss’ ‘ss’ ‘ss’ ‘ff’ ‘ff’ ‘ff’ is a little bit like the

sound of bullets passing overhead.

Or you could say that these are the sounds shivering soldiers would make.

And we know with sibilance that it's a very sinister sound.

It reminds us of the hissing of a snake, and it really just creates this kind of negative

atmosphere that reminds the reader of the constant threat of the environment the soldiers

are in.

And there's also caesura as well.

Caesura is where we stop midline in a poem due to the use of punctuation beyond a comma

really.

So we can see there is a lot of caesura with a lot of punctuation that makes us stop in

this verse here.

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.

And this is the first time in the poem where punctuation beyond the comma is used midline.

Now why is that?

Well, if we think about what this stanza is about, it's basically saying that the soldiers

are thinking back to home.

And I think the punctuation usage creates a division on each line reflecting the division

caused by war between those at home and the present setting for the soldiers in a freezing-cold

trench.

Now, finally, I want to look at the ending.

The ending of the poem is really important.

We know that it ends with the line ‘but nothing happens’.

If we're saying that the poem has established that the soldiers see themselves as a necessary

sacrifice to save the happy lives of the public and that's what they're doing, then the ending

of the poem is very depressing and bleak because it goes to this line ‘but nothing happens’.

And, structurally, the poem ends as it began with the refrain ‘but nothing happens’.

And this repetition of the ending, this repetition of them – when you get to the end of the

poem – going back to the start creates a cyclical structure.

The poem ends up back where it started, highlighting again the futility of the war, the fact that

nothing has been achieved.

They're just slowly dying.

Guys, I hope you found this video useful.

If you stuck with it to 28 minutes, you've done brilliantly.

Please do subscribe to the channel, and thank you for watching.