Nature in Exposure

?
View mindmap
  • Nature in Exposure
    • "Our brains aches, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us..."
      • "Ache" is a particular form of pain that is chronic and can stay for a long time.
      • The use of "brains" refers to the psychological torment, more than physical pain, highlighting their actual reason for being there and their self-identity is under attack.
        • The wind, the weather and the boredom mixed with the discomfort is causing the chronic pain in the brains.
      • The "east winds" are described as "merciless" giving them a human quality, suggesting that nature has no regard for the well being and just like an enemy is looking to destroy them completely.
      • "merciless" suggests that this attack will have no end, no prisoners and no one will be exempt from the pain that nature will cause.
      • "Iced east winds that knive us" are violent imagery, someone stabbing you.
        • The verb "knive" is referring to the cold and bitter steel, a particular form of pain, you can almost imagine flesh being separated by the bitter steel.
      • Right from the beginning you can see what frame of mind Wilfred Owen is writing in. It is cold and he is in desperation and this sets the tone for the entire poem of the soldiers, being under attack from the weather.
        • The weather is their great enemy not the German's anymore.
    • "We hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire, like twitching agonies of men among its brambles"
      • This is the continuation of the psychological strain from the war and weather is putting on the soldiers.
      • The simile "like twitching agonies of men and among its brambles" suggests the idea that the enemy soldiers being caught up in barbed wire in an attempt to get through their trench to kill them. The wind is seen as an enemy combatant who has just been held at bay.
      • The ghostly imagery, strain the soldiers are suffering, highlighting the idea of the intangible invisible enemy just at the very top of the cusps of reaching them.
        • They feel that they're ultimate death is slow in its arrival but is inevitable and doesn't take much empathy to imagine the amount of strain.
        • We can see that the power of nature is trying to trick, haunt and make them mental in psychological way.
    • "Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey."
      • "massing" is a gathering of troops.
      • "attacks" is a verb, a deliberate assault upon their position.
      • "ranks on shivering" suggests waves of soldiers, organised relentless attack. Here he has personified weather as an organised, mobilised, armed enemy.
        • Therfore the power of nature is shown through this semantic field of military and war.
      • The bleak and desperate atmosphere, slow death and torture is established through a structural point, which is refrain.
        • At the end of each stanza there is a variation of nothing happening or we are dying.
          • This permeates through the poem, overwhelming the reader, or impressing the reader of there experience of war being a slow tormenting, torturous death.

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar English Literature resources:

See all English Literature resources »See all AQA Anthology resources »