Why not an end stop, a full stop? The first world war was fought between Christian countries, each side believing they had the divine right to victory. Exposure has eight five-line stanzas, the lines between 5 and 14 syllables. The sentries whisper - a sentry is a soldier on duty, a look out - it's a bit too quiet for their liking. If the EV is greater than 0, we will get an overexposed photo. Investigating language and tone in Exposure. Alliteration is a device frequently used in poetry or rhetoric (speech-making) whereby words starting with the same consonant are used in close proximity- e.g. Lengthy poem- represents the long process of waiting in the trenches. Suffering appears to be pointless. From literally “some other war,” Simpson writes “At dawn the first shell landed with a crack” (“The Battle” 9) and that “Somewhere up ahead / Guns thudded” (2-3). Nothing changes in the rhyming pattern, nothing happens on the front.
Also presents their half-hearted nature.
'crackle', 'whisper', 'cuckoo'. Like so many of the later poems, Owen’s tone in this poem is one of helplessness and despair. Personal plurals 'us' and 'we' shows unity between the soldiers and suggests that Owen is writing from his own personal experiences. Stanza 1 - knive us/nervous......silent/salient, Stanza 4 - silence/nonchalance....snow/renew, Stanza 5 - faces/fusses...snow-dazed/sun-dozed. An omnipotent biblical God made everything, including humans.
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Surely surreal? A line of poetry containing six feet or stresses (beats). - after dramatically heightening the tension each stanza ends with an anti-climax 'but nothing happens'. Owen imagines being back home “glimpsing the sunk fires” (“Exposure” 26) before his attention turns “back to our dying” (30). What is exposure value?
They're in enemy territory, waiting, awake but weary, between waking and sleeping. Repetition of 'Nothing happens' implies waiting, uncertainty amd boredom. speaker describes the trauma of living and struggling in such poor conditions.
Both the beginning and the ending refers to the freezing conditions, which reinforces that 'nothing happened'. Simpson inherited from Owen that it is sometimes critique enough to describe war exactly as it is experienced. A war goes on around them, yet they are in a strange surreal bubble of drowsiness and dreaminess. The rhyming in exposure is pararhyme which shows the unease of the situation. The pairs of words sail/seal, more/mere, pole/pale, bar/beer are all examples of pararhyme. ‘knife us’ / ‘nervous’ l.1,4: The attack of the wind may mask the attack of the human enemy, causing fear, ‘silent’ / ‘salient’ l.2,3: The sleepless anxiety caused by the utter quiet of the night makes the men forget the important features of the battle field, Wire/war l.2/l.3 Owen pulls together the minutiae of conflict - the barbed ‘wire’ l.6 with the collective noun ‘war’ l.9 which consolidates the whole horror, Brambles/rumbles l.7/l.8 Owen takes his image from nature but succeeds in showing us the barbs on the wire. Dawn is seen to ‘grow’ and also become ‘grey’ l.11,14 and in an almost comic rhyme her ‘clouds sag stormy’ l.12 which constitute her melancholy ‘army’ l.13. Owen demonstrates how even the snow-flakes appear to make conscious decisions about where they will settle / whom they will attack - they ‘flock, pause and renew’ l.18 their advance. They only gained 6 miles by the end of the war. In stanzas six and eight, however, the perspective temporarily includes third-person plural, when the speaker is lost in thought and imagining what it would be like to return home during battle. They will make the supreme sacrifice, like Christ. The first four long lines of each stanza are relatively uniform in length. Here however, ‘Dawn’ only brings another day of ‘poignant misery’ l.11. 'burnt and purged'. In November 1918 he was killed in action at the age of 25, one week before the Armistice. The personification of the winds for example brings an added dimension to the character of that element; snow is portrayed in unusual fashion - it is naturally white but in the poem 'seen' as black. The sounds create discord and challenge our expectation, yet Owen uses a regular pattern of ab ba, which creates the sense of stasis. This brings sound texture and interest for the reader: When two words close together in a line have the same vowel sounds, which again add to the overall sound dynamic: A caesura is a pause in a line, often because of punctuation but can also be after a large amount of syllables, say nine or ten. Pararhyme is common in the poetry of the war poet Wilfrid Owen (1893-1918). Note the dots that end the first line, an echo of the first stanza with a long pause. It reminds them of those who are in agony, caught in the brambles, in the throes of death perhaps. Anti-climatic ending of each stanza. Understanding histograms in photography.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents. ‘silent’ / ‘salient’ l.2,3: The sleepless anxiety caused by the utter quiet of the night makes the men forget the impo… The popular song at that time by Ivor Novello 'Keep The Home Fires Burning' is part inspiration behind this stanza. That first line has several long vowels.. Exposure is not applied through a series of rules, but, rather, through three basic settings that are the key for understanding exposure in photography and learning how to master exposure in your images.. We have pararhyme when the final syllable in two lines of a poem not only ends with the same consonant but begins with the same consonant, even though the vowel sounds in the two syllables are not the same. We know there is a group of tired people out in the cold wind and that some way off flares are sent out into the night sky which confuses them. As in: When a line flows on into the next without punctuation. . The fifth line asks a question. A figure of speech where a non-person, for example an animal, the weather, or some inanimate object, is described as if it were a person, being given human qualities. Exposure is full of powerful images that evoke strong feelings of helplessness, danger and tedium. He was sent to a war hospital in Edinburgh to be treated for shell shock. Basically, the speaker is saying that God has deserted them; their situation is so alien they feel that God's love is dying, despite it being nearly spring, with its awesome green energy. As an officer he had responsibility for his men and was by all accounts a brave and compassionate soldier.
If the war is being fought elsewhere, what are these men doing here, away from the action?
Examples of the similarities between Owen and Simpson were suggested in a 1963 Times Literary Supplement review of Five American Poets, which proclaims Simpson’s poetry is “one of the nearest things to Wilfrid [sic] Owen to come out of the last war” (Lazer 71). The sounds create discord and challenge our expectation, yet Owen uses a regular pattern of ab ba, which creates the sense of stasis. The east winds are merciless and icy. Indented, that is, a distance away from the left margin, this line sticks out because Owen intended it to be of special significance. They dream they are now back home in front of coal fires...note that word glozed (glazed+closed) which is made up, and the glowing coals are dark-red jewels, becoming precious.
Yet Owen suggests the love of God for them, and their faith in God, seems to have died. . Repetetive rhyme scheme of ABBAC- Reinforces the idea of nothing happening. Owen's men are willing to die or rather resigned to die, to allow those at home to live. 'fast in fires', 'stars, start'. This might resemble the conflict of nature vs man or the soldiers vs the government. Wilfred Owen, who wrote some of the best British poetry on World War I, composed nearly all of his poems in slightly over a year, from August 1917 to September 1918.
These are battle weary men up against real weaponry and the all too present raw nature. A-Z: General definitions: Pararhyme Definition.
Overwhelming use of personification of weather- highlights the ferocity of nature and presents nature as more deadly than enemy soldiers.
The link between Owen and Simpson’s experiences is exemplified by clear parallels in Owen’s “Exposure” and Simpson’s “The Battle.” Both these poems of winter combat: Owen’s “Exposure” is written primarily in first-person plural using “Our” and “we” for the subject throughout (1, 2). The pairs of words mad/bed, peal/maul, hate/pot, and game/home are all examples of half-rhyme.
begin in anticipation of conflict by focusing on silence broken by gunfire. The long first line, with that comma and necessary pause for the reader after three words, has those unusual dots at the end...signifying a further pause, pause for thought. What is of interest is the shorter fifth line which hangs suspended below. Imagery of the soldiers- present uncertainty and fear. Imagery of weather- 1917 was one of the coldest winters ever recorded. 'Exposure'- revelation of something secret or exposure of the terrible conditions in the ternches.
Search. (http://ww1centenary.oucs.ox.ac.uk/?p=4212)