Exposure by Wilfred Owen

In Verse One, Owen starts by explaining how he and the people around him are feeling. He writes that their brains ache by the winds that are blowing. This shows that the cold is physically hurting them by giving them sore heads. We can assume that they are in a trench during World War One and there are flares going off around them. They are all awake because of the silence, as this is abnormal due to them normally hearing artillery bombardment. One of the techniques that Owen uses in this paragraph is personification, in the first line. He writes "the merciless east winds that knife us". This helps to show the pain that the wind was causing to the men, and comparing it to the pain that would be caused if it was a knife that was being stabbed into them. In this sentence, a knife isn't really 'knifing' them, so this shows that personification is used. Also in Verse One, consonan

In Verse Two, Owen tells us that the men spend their time waiting for something to happen. The visibility around them is weak, but they can clearly hear the wind blowing frantically through the barbwire that encircles them. We can see that they don't know why they are stuck in a trench, waiting for something to happen. It hints that they don't have good leadership within the group. A technique that Owen uses in this paragraph is some more personification. He writes "mad gusts tugging on the wire". This line allows Owen to show how violently the wind was blowing, causing the wire to move. It allows us to appreciate how cold the men must have been, due to this violent wind. I can see that this is personification because the wire isn't literally tugging the wire. The effect is only created by the wind blowing the wire. In this verse, I can also see onomatopoeia. He uses the word "rumbles" to describe the effects of the artillery. This word allows us to hear the noise that they would be able to hear and feel in the trench. "Gunnery rumbles, far off, like a dull rumour of some other war". In this simile, Owen compares the noise that he can hear from the battlefield, to the sounds he would he able to here from a very distant war. This shows that he sees no reason for the sounds to be present, as they would make no difference if they were from a battle that they were not involved in. The Verse ends in a rhetorical question, "What are we doing here". This shows that even they don't know the purpose of the war, or why they are there.

In Verse Three, we learn that dawn arrives but still the men aren't optimistic. They start to feel like the war is going to last forever and they are going to be stuck in these awful conditions. They are becoming soaked but still the weather seems to look worse, and as if it is about to attack them. At this part in the poem, the weather seems to be the real enemy. The line, "But nothing happens" helps to show that they are becoming frustrated, as they have to stand out in the awful weather when there seems to be no battle to fight. There is one main technique that is mostly used in this Verse. This is personification. One example of this is when Owen writes "the poignant misery of dawn begins to grow". This line gives the impression that the dawn is causing the men to feel even more down and cause them misery. Personification is show because the dawn is not physically growing, but the men develop the feeling that it is.

In conclusion to "Exposure" written by Wilfred Owen, I can say that Owen successfully uses many techniques to deliver the theme of World War One being pointless. He uses techniques like personification to show how extreme some examples of living in the trenches were. This includes when he wrote about the frost 'fastening' to the men. The onomatopoeia successfully allows us to hear the noises and crashes that the men would here. Finally, the smiles and metaphors that Owen uses for comparison, successful compares extreme things such as the icy looking eyes that the men had acquired.

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