Summary
AQA Exposure Poem Summary
Colour coded summary of Exposure with context, analysis and methods annotations.
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methods context message/analysisExposure
● He joined the war in October 1915, but, after some traumatic events on the
battlefield, he was sent to hospital to be treated for shell-shock.
● This poem highlights the reality of conflicts and the deaths that are often a result. It
focuses more on the conflict of the soldiers and the harsh conditions they faced in
WW1 rather than any actual battles. It seeks to dismiss the glamorisation of
patriotism and expose the truths of WW1.
● The poem has a regular rhyme scheme of half rhymes.
● The rhymes are jarring and not perfect, but rough and uncomfortable to mimic the
conditions in the trenches and like the mental strain the men are under.
● The metre is jarring and unpretty
○ The lines range from 12-14 syllables, which sound slightly jarring.
■ Again what Owen is describing is a very unnatural situation and the
antithesis of being civilised.
● The title suggests the poet will expose the reality of war and uncover the true horrors
of war.
● This immediately suggests to the reader that the poet is retaliating against warfare
and perhaps disagrees with the idea of war that many people were forced to believe
in, through propaganda
● The poem is based on his experience as a soldier on the front line in the trenches in
the First World War
● The idea of nihilism is extreme negativity - the belief that nothing in life has any
meaning of value. In the sixth verse the poet describes how they dream of ‘ghosts’.
Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive
us…
● The pronoun ‘Our’ suggests this is affecting all the soldiers
○ the soldiers are suffering collectively,
■ Evokes a strange sense of unification that they are fighting in this war
together
● The verb ‘ache’ portrays the mental well being that has been affected by the war
○ Lethargic, fatigue, tired
○ Their brains ache with both cold and, possibly, the extreme fatigue, loneliness
and despair that they all felt.
● Experiencing ‘shell shock’
● The guns are noisy, the wind is cold, giving headaches
● The writer uses personification to describe the winds as unstoppable
○ They feel powerless as if nature has turned its back on them
○ They are alone in a hostile environment despite the idea of togetherness
mentioned previously
● The ellipsis is used suggests the unexpectedness of what’s about to happen
● The wind is personified as a murderer.
○ The winds have no mercy and the soldiers feel as if they are being stabbed
with cold.
■ This is in contrast to being stabbed with real bayonets in a real battle.
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