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Exposure is a powerful poem that depicts the horrors of trench warfare in World War I. It contrasts the brutal and futile reality of the soldiers' lives with the beauty and hope of nature and love.
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- “Exposure” Summary.
- “Exposure” Themes. The Monotony and Meaninglessness of War. See where this theme is active in the poem. Man vs. Nature.
- Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Exposure” Lines 1-5. Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us . . . Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . .
- “Exposure” Symbols. Dawn. See where this symbol appears in the poem.
Wilfred Owen. In “Exposure,” Wilfred Owen depicts the fate of soldiers who perished from hypothermia before dawn, exposed to the horrific conditions of open trench warfare. Often, before ...
Exposure - Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us . . . Exposure - The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets.
- Stanza One
- Stanza Two
- Stanza Three
- Stanza Four
- Stanza Five
- Stanza Six
- Stanzas Seven and Eight
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The beauty of Owen’s poetry lies in the simplicity of his words: he does not need to tangle himself up in words to show what he means. The opening stanzadelivers us to the bleak French landscape without delay, and Owen brings the surroundings alive by using action verbs. For example, ‘our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us’...
In the second stanza of ‘Exposure,’ Owen introduces the war: always present, even when it is not visible. The phrase ‘twitching agonies’, although simple, helps to nudge the reader into the poem. Also, note the distant prevalence of war; although not immediately there, the presence of it is felt in the simplest of words – ‘the flickering gunnery ru...
The awful continuation of war seems to be a cycle – ‘we only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy’, an inevitable fact of life, a piece of nature that the soldiers have now taken to be as accurate as possible. Everything is war. Dawn masses her melancholy army, ‘attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey / but nothing happen...
Nature, here, seems to be an attacking force itself – the bullets are ‘less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow’, the wind is nonchalant at their suffering. Owen gives the impression that the soldiers have been lost in a drifting, desolate land, where everything at their beck and call is going to attack them, where everything strives ...
Note the misery inherent in these few stanzas. The soldiers have been beaten – not by the Germans, but by the weather, the awful, crushing weather that has left them unable to fight, that has dazed their minds to days of brighter futures, that has left them in a shell-hole of misery. They have reached the point that the despair they feel feels almo...
Even in peace, there is exhaustion – ‘slowly our ghosts drag home’. And there is the sense, here, that peace is not really for them. It is glimpsed, not attained. ‘Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed’, Owen writes, and this shows the distance between soldier and civilian, that the soldiers cannot envisage, anymore, a state of...
The despair reaches a point in the final two stanzas of ‘Exposure.’ This is where action, should it happen, must happen – however, nothing does. The soldiers die alone, in a field, frozen, and are found by the members of the army that bury the dead. They come across them in this field, and wait for something to happen – but nothing does. All of the...
Learn about the poem 'Exposure' by Wilfred Owen, a First World War poet who wrote about the harsh conditions and horrors of trench warfare. Read the poem, its rhyme scheme, meter, and analysis, and explore the historical and literary context of this masterpiece.
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- Poetry Analyst
In Exposure, Wilfred Owen looks at the horrors of warfare. The poem’s content, ideas, language and structure are explored. Comparisons and alternative interpretations are also considered.
by Wilfred Owen. Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us . . . Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . . Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . . Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, But nothing happens.
