In this essay I am going to explore how the poet Wilfred Owen puts across his points of view about the First World War in the poem "Exposure".
In the first stanza, he describes the way the soldiers are feeling and their thoughts. He shows this in writing the mental and emotional effects of the war. He uses phrases such as "our brains ache" and other phrases such as "worried by the silence". These sentences show and represent the feelings and the emotional traumas the soldiers are suffering. Wilfred Owen is trying to make the point that war is as much an emotional battle than a physical battle. He also proves that it isn't just the fighting taking place that causes damage to the soldiers, but the surrounding environment also.
In the second stanza Wilfred Owen moves onto the physical side of the war. He talks about the fighting it self. But also it talks about the weather and the mental tricks it played on the soldiers. Wilfred Owen rights "we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire, Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles". These two lines are trying to give the conception of the wind acting as a person who is pulling the barbed wire in no-mans land. In the last two lines though Wilfred Owen starts to talk about the actual fighting. He says in his writing, "the flickering gunnery rumbles", showing that fighting is now actually taking place.
In the third stanza Wilfred Owen talks mainly of the weather. He uses the phrase "We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy", very effectively in the second line of the third stanza.
Furthermore in the forth stanza, Wilfred Owen talks about the dangers. He says that the firing of bullets are less deadly than the shudder of black snow. By saying this he is giving the impression that the cold weather is killing the soldiers more than the firing. Stating that the soldiers need to hide from the cold rather than the bullets.
The fifth stanza is based around the winter.
