Exposure - Language, tone and structure

Language in Exposure

The dominant elements

Owen’s choice of words in Exposure powerfully, but simply, describes the extremes to which he and his men were exposed for two days. The poem is dominated by words from the semantic field of the weather, most of which are qualified by terms with negative associations: 

• ‘iced east winds’ l.1
• ‘mad gusts’ l.6
• ‘rain soaks’ l.12
• ‘clouds sag stormy’ l.12
• ‘Dawn massing in the east’ l.13
• ‘ranks of grey’ (cloud) l.14
• ‘air .. black with snow’ l.17
• ‘flowing flakes’ (snow) l.18
• ‘the wind’s nonchalance’ l.19
• ‘Pale flakes ‘ (snow) l.21
• ‘snow-dazed’ l.22
• ‘frost’ l.36
• ‘ice’ l.39

Alliteration and personification

Owen heightens our awareness of the conditions under which the men suffer by his use of alliteration, further emphasised by his personification of the elements. 

The east winds are merciless and icy. The sibilant ‘s’s combined with hard consonants ‘d’ and ‘t’ create a cutting, bitter edge to the elements which ‘knife’ the men, leaving us in no doubt about the pain they intentionally inflict l.1. In l.6 the gusts of wind are personified as mad, their auditory quality conveyed by the short ‘g’ sound of ‘tugging on the wire’, suggesting the catching action. The wind is also human in its indifference, its ‘nonchalance’ in the face of suffering l.19. 

In much fiction, the coming of dawn is a motif for the arrival of hope. Here however, ‘Dawn’ only brings another day of ‘poignant misery’ l.11. It is personified as a weary female war commander, ‘massing her melancholy army’ l.13, the alliteration creating a sense of oppression. The ‘army’ of clouds is like German army uniforms and German tanks: ‘grey’, ‘stormy’ and lined up in ‘rank upon shivering rank’, ready to attack.

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. The flakes have fingers which feel for the faces of the men l.21. Collectively, the wintry elements are as much an enemy on the attack as are the Germans.

As with the opening of the poem, in lines 12-14 Owen again combines sibilance with hard consonants to create a desolate atmosphere, with ‘lasts’, ‘soaks’, ‘clouds sag stormy’, ‘massing’, ‘east’, ‘attacks’, ‘ranks’ and ‘shivering’. This continues in the next stanza as:

and the air ‘shudders’ with ‘snow’ l.17. Both are ‘deadly’.

Owen juxtaposes the sibilance of the bullets with the light yet lethal ‘f’ sound of the flakes of snow in stanzas four and five. Though gentle, the penetrating cold of the snow sends the men into dazed reveries that also torment them – ‘Shutters and doors all closed: on us’ l.29 – where Owen re-employs the ‘harsh sibilance’ technique.

Assonance

Owen frequently uses assonance to emphasise the mood of the narrative. In l.11-12, the long ‘oh’ of ‘grow’, ‘only know’ and ‘soaks’ draws out the painful process of the day’s awakening. The same long sounds in l.26 ‘Slowly’, ‘ghosts’, ‘home’ and ‘glozed’ convey the extended effort required by snow-numbed spirits to engage with a world beyond their current environment, such slow reactions being typical of the onset of hypothermia. The effort wasn’t worth it – everything was ‘closed’ l.29.

By contrast, Owen links positive words by an expansive long ‘I’ sound in ‘kind fires’ l.31, ‘smile’ and ‘child’ l.32, for which the men ‘lie’ in their defence l.34.

Tone

Like so many of the later poems, Owen’s tone in this poem is one of helplessness and despair. Suffering appears to be pointless.

Owen presents us with a picture of communal endurance and courage. He is one with his men: ‘our brains ache’ l.1, ‘we keep awake’ l.2, ‘we cringe in holes’ l.22. He also shares in his comrades’ dream of home and spirit of self-sacrifice: ‘not loath, we lie out here’ l.34. 

Yet he also questions what on earth they are achieving: ‘What are we doing here?’ l.10, ‘Is it that we are dying?’ l.25. Nothing is being achieved by the men’s sacrifice, ‘Nothing happens.’ l.5,15,20,40. 

Structure and versification in Exposure

Each of Owen’s eight stanzas ends with a short half line. In the first, third, fourth and final verses Owen creates the burden: ‘But nothing happens’. Each of the short, last lines in the remaining stanzas has a story of its own to tell. When written or read out these lines read:

• ‘What are we doing here?’
• ‘Is it that we are dying?’
• ‘We turn back to our dying.’
• ‘For love of God is dying.’

The first question is answered by the second, which prompts the action of the third. The penultimate verse ends poignantly and perhaps ambiguously. Here on the field of battle the men make Christ-like sacrifices for those they love. Yet Owen suggests the love of God for them, and their faith in God, seems to have died.

Rhyme

Owen’s use of pararhyme is clearly developed in Exposure. The sounds create discord and challenge our expectation, yet Owen uses a regular pattern of ab ba, which creates the sense of stasis. Nothing changes in the rhyming pattern, nothing happens on the front.

The action is all in the rhymes:

• ‘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. Again a small detail is set against the distant booming of artillery fire
• 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.
• ‘Silence’ l.16 half rhymes with good effect with ‘nonchalance’ l.19 and emphasises the carelessness of nature
• Snow feels the ‘faces’ l.21 and from this Owen makes the transition to dreams of warmth and an English late Spring as ‘snow dazed’ men become ‘sun dozed’ where the blackbird ‘fusses’ l. 24
• The fires of home are ‘glozed’ l.26, a mixture of the words ‘glazed’ and ‘glowed’ but only lead onto doors that ‘close’. These fires ‘burn’ but not for the men who were ’born’ to die.

Finally the collective pronoun ‘us’ become the eyes of ‘ice’ l.36,39. Notice a half pun within this line: the ‘eyes are ice’ which almost sounds as if each was interchangeable - a symbol of the nihilism of death where everything becomes nothing. The onomatopoeic ‘crisp’ and ‘grasp’ of lines 37 and 38 tell of the final actions of the weather and of the burial party.

Rhythm


Within each stanza, four lengthy lines set the scene and tell what story there is to tell. Often they are hexameters but Owen frequently adds extra syllables or whole metrical feet, and does not use a consistent metre, perhaps representing how snow-dazed minds struggle to stay orderly. 

One short line punctuates the narrative with the reality: ‘but nothing happens’ l.5. This serves as a contrast to the huge events which are to do with ‘dying’: the death of men, of hope, of belief and of the love of God.

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