There are fifteen poems in the GCSE Power & Conflict anthology.

For your exam, you will be given one poem in full, printed on the page, and you will be asked to compare this poem to another from the anthology.

All of the GCSE English Literature course is closed-book, meaning that you will need to learn at least three lines from each poem.

It is possible to get top marks for this question by making sure that you know the following:

• What the poem is about

• What the poem means

• The methods the poet uses to convey their message

• The links between the ideas of other poems in the anthology

Synposis

Whatever the question is, it is important that you understand what the poem is about. This will support you in adapting your argument to fit the focus of the question. This section includes:

• A general overview of the poem

• A detailed look at the poem line-by-line

• Analysis of the poem, giving Wilfred Owen’s intention and message

A General Overview of the Poem

Exposure explores the psychological and physical impact of military conflict on young soldiers in contrast with the expected action-packed drama of war. The speaker, a soldier (likely modelled off the poet’s experiences in the trenches), details the monotonous and hellish existence of soldiers worn down by weather and attrition, not violence. The poem depicts the bleak reality of trench warfare for the average soldier in World War One.

Line-by-Line

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.

The poem opens with the assertion that the soldiers’ “brains ache”, a technical impossibility given the lack of nerve endings in the brain. This hyperbolic opening clause sets the scene for extreme physical discomfort that borders on the irrational, before being clarified that it is the result of the personified “east wind” that “merciless[ly] knive[s]” the soldiers. It is the weather, not any threat of violence, that poses the most significant threat to them – a theme that the poem will take to the nth degree as it progresses. That said, there is still an ever-present sense of real physical danger.

Indeed, despite the “[w]earied” and “confuse[d]” energy, the soldiers “keep awake because the night is silent”. It is the silence that threatens them, because it means violence could strike them unaware, at any moment. They are “[w]orried by silence” and so the “sentries whisper, curious, nervous”, expecting conflict. But, crucially, “nothing happens”. This is the first of many repetitions of this refrain, one which gets to the crux of the poem: whereby action is promised, teased, expected, but never delivered.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,

Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,

Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.

What are we doing here?

In the second stanza, there is a strong sense that the soldiers are, ironically, detached from the very war that they are fighting. They are passive, “[w]atching”, “hear[ing]” wind and the gunfire “[f]ar off”, and wondering “[w]hat are [they] doing [t]here”. Even the watching and hearing that they do is of “gusts” of wind “tugging on the wire”, rather than of military action – it is only “[l]ike” the “twitching agonies of men”. Whilst the “flickering gunnery [that] rumbles” is “incessant[...]”, it is nevertheless “dull” in its distance. It ensures fear, but promises no climax. Owen deploys the rhetorical question at the stanza’s end to depict the soldiers’ hopelessness.

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow...

We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army

Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey,

But nothing happens.

The next stanza is decidedly more emotive – inasmuch as the language carries a distinct semantic field of sadness (“poignant”, “melancholy”, etc.) – but also inasmuch as the gloomy pathetic fallacy is unleashed with fervour: “misery of dawn”, “rain soaks”, “clouds sag stormy”. The scene is miserable. More than gloom, however, the weather also brings with it a genuine violence that is otherwise missing from these soldiers’ experience: “[an] army [a]ttack[ing] once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey”. Despite this militarised language, “nothing [military] happens” once again. Ironically, it is in this depiction of the non-war that is the inclement weather where we see our first and only explicit mention of the word ‘war’, in the tragic declarative “war lasts”.

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.

Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,

With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew,

We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,

But nothing happens.

The fourth stanza represents a brief moment of genuine military action, though it is short-lived. It is “bullets” which “streak the silence”, with an excess of sibilance (“Sudden successive”) for good measure. That is all. Immediately, it is asserted that the bullets were “[l]ess deadly than the air” around them. Once again, the weather is personified as an enemy (snow “flakes that flock, pause, and renew” to attack), but a patient one (“wandering”, “the wind’s nonchalance”). Once more, though both bullets and snow are “deadly”, we are reminded that “nothing happens”.

Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces—

We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,

Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,

Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.

—Is it that we are dying?

The fifth stanza represents a tonal shift. The soldiers have become hopeless in the wake of their war of attrition. They can only “cringe”, “stare”, “drowse” and wonder “[i]s it that [they] are dying”, with the verb choices combining with this rhetorical question to depict people who have given up hope. Indeed, they have turned their “back[s] on forgotten dreams”. Even in the light of more idyllic, pastoral imagery (“grassier ditches”, “sun-dozed”, “blossoms”, “the blackbird”), they are unmoved and numb. The only active figure in the stanza is once again the personified weather, with its “[p]ale flakes with fingering stealth [that] come feeling for [their] faces”. Only the slow-moving, ever-present force of evil that is the weather has any part to play by now.

Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed

With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;

For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;

Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed—

We turn back to our dying.

In the next stanza, Owen contrasts the gentle domesticity that the soldiers miss with their obligatory reality: military service. Images of “home” are caught in “glimpses”: “sunk fires”, “crickets jingl[ing]”, “innocent mice rejoic[ing]”. For the soldiers, however, the “[s]hutters and doors [are] all closed” on them, and they must “turn back to [their] dying”. The final line is ambiguous: are they turning back to their “dying” compatriates, to look after them, or are they turning back to their duty of “dying”? It is unnecessary to decide what is intended; both are bleak assertions.

Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;

Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.

For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;

Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,

For love of God seems dying.

The penultimate stanza begins with what feels like a rationale for the hopeless misery that is trench warfare: “not otherwise can kind fires burn; / Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit”. It is redolent of the ‘For King and Country’ propaganda that encouraged young men to enlist for this war, and is unconvincing. The consequences of the soldiers’ enlistment (their “love [being] made afraid”) is justified by recourse to “God’s invincible spring”, and as a result they are “not loath [to] lie out [t]here” – it is what they “were born” for – but a reader is not moved to agree. 

The final line of the stanza, “For love of God seems dying” has the same ambiguity of the previous stanza’s reference to dying. There are two main interpretations: that to love God is to die (“lov[ing] God seems [to be synonymous with] dying”); or, that love for God is waning (“love of God seems [to be] dying”). Again, the ‘correct’ reading is irrelevant; the polysemy is productive for Owen’s purposes.

Tonight, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,

Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.

The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,

Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,

But nothing happens.

The final stanza looks forward, shifting into the speculative future tense after the time adverb, “Tonight”. It is morbid, focusing on death (“burying-party”, “half-known faces”), as a result of the cold (“frost [...] Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp”), but – more strikingly – is also a direct accusation at God: “His frost” will kill. The initial capitalisation of the determiner “His” makes it clear that God is the perpetrator of this torture. 

The “burying-party [have] shaking grasp[s]” as they “[p]ause over half-known faces”, suggesting horror – but the ambiguity of the determiner “their” in the following clause “[a]ll their eyes are ice” suggests that whilst the bodies’ eyes may have frozen solid physically, it may be equally valid to assume that emotions of the burying party have been numbed too, their eyes iced. 

Still, among all this horror, “nothing happens”.

Writer’s Methods

This section aims to support your revision by providing you with concrete and clear examples of methods that Wilfred Owen uses. 

Remember: methods support meaning, not the other way round. You will gain more marks focusing your essays on the big ideas of the poems and then supporting these ideas with the methods that the writer uses.

Form

The poem is broken into eight five-line stanzas, all following an abba pararhyme scheme (pararhyme being where words almost rhyme, but fall frustratingly short, such as “stormy” and “army”). The initial capitalisation combined with the consistent stanza shape and pararhyme to give the impression of being poetic from a distance, before falling short on closer inspection. The final line of each stanza is shorter than the others, giving a sense of incompletion, enhanced by the prevalence of enjambing lines for entire stanzas, with only that final line providing any sentence closure. All of this contributes to the poem’s anticlimactic feel.

Structure

The poem’s first three stanzas lay the foundation for the poem’s engagement the reconfiguration of war as torturous monotony under the oppression of the elements. The fourth stanza briefly thrills with a mention of actual bullets, before returning to dwelling on the danger of the conditions. The remaining four stanzas engage with the hopeless helplessness of the soldiers with nothing to do and nowhere to go but to die out in the cruel weather. Throughout, the refrain of “But nothing happens” ties it all together as an endless and pointless pursuit.

Language

The most striking feature of the language in the poem is its insistence on using violent language when describing the least military things. It is the wind that “knive[s them]”, the dawn that “mass[es] her melancholy army”, the air that is “deadly”, and the frost that will “pucker[...] foreheads crisp”. The semantic field of pugnacity refers to the “attacks” of the weather, with the actual warfare – the “flickering gunnery” and the “flights of bullets” – only “rumbl[ing] Far off” or “streak[ing] the silence”, but causing no harm. It is quite clear: the true enemy is the conditions of trench warfare.

Context

At MyEdSpace, we use this analogy to discuss context – ketchup, salt and chips.

If you ordered a portion of chips, and asked for salt, you wouldn’t then dump the salt into the corner of your chips and start dipping each individual chip into the salt. 

When you put salt on your chips, you sprinkle it over, sparingly, so as to give a good coverage of salt across the chips as a whole. Context is just like salt on chips. 

Context is not ketchup – because it would be appropriate to squeeze ketchup into the corner of your plate and dip each chip in (and in fact, that is advised).

So when you’re including contextual information in your essays, sprinkle it across the essay, just like you sprinkle salt on your chips.

Let’s link the context to the key ideas and themes of the poem.

Biographical Insight

Wilfred Owen wrote this poem whilst hospitalised for PTSD (then called “shell-shock”, given the context) during World War 1, where he met fellow war poet and anti-war activist Siegfried Sassoon, who encouraged Owen’s poetry, which he did, before returning to the front lines and tragically being killed in action a week before the war officially ended. 

Antiwar Sentiment

The bleakness and horror of this poem stood in direct contradiction to the pro-war propaganda circulating the country during the Great War, making it a deliberately political, anti-establishment piece.

Comparison

You are required to write an essay in your exam that is a comparison of the ideas and themes explored in two poems from the Power & Conflict anthology. Therefore, it is very important to revise the poems in pairs and to enter the exam with an idea of what poem you will choose to compare once you know what the named poem is.

Exposure and Charge of the Light Brigade 

Both poems explore the horrors of futile military endeavours. Both poems depict wartime struggles without actually detailing any bloodshed. However,  Exposure dwells on the real-time misery experienced by those stuck in tedious trench warfare, exposed to the elements, whilst Charge of the Light Brigade focuses on the heroic status afforded to the dead in war.

Similarity:

Both poems avoid describing any violent events.

Evidence and Analysis 

Owen’s poem details the ways in which trench warfare need not contain any actual ‘action’ in order to be deadly. Alongside the litany of references to the weather’s effects (e.g. “iced east winds that knive us”), there is the refrain: “but nothing happens”. The conjunction “but” indicates that Owen knew the expectation would be for violence and this contradicts it with the pronoun “nothing”.

Tennyson’s poem explores very real stories of death in entirely euphemistic language. When revealing the deaths of many of the “six hundred”, he reveals that “horse and hero fell”, with the verb “fell” indicating death, and the alliterative honouring language of “horse and hero” figuring as rose-tinted perspectives on these living, dying beings.

Difference:

The poets present opposite receptions of the soldiers fighting.

Evidence and Analysis

Wilfred Owen’s poem has the soldiers rejected by society.

In his poem, the soldiers do not receive a hero’s welcome. The speaker remarks that on him and his fellow soldiers “the doors are closed”, meaning they must “turn back to [their] dying”. That is the purpose they are given in this poem — simply to die, with that gerund “dying” rendering it an ‘activity’ or pursuit — and until such a time as they die in glory or return victorious they are “closed” out of society.
Contrastingly, in Tennyson’s  poem, the soldiers are lauded as heroes, without qualification.

In his poem, the language abounds with honouring terms. Throughout, the soldiers are called “noble”, are “Honor[ed]” and praised for riding “boldly” and “well”, thus achieving “glory” forever. They are even presented as not “dismayed” in the Face of certain death. It is crucial to Tennyson’s poem that these heroes come across as heroic.