The unnecessary outbreak of war is consistently highlighted throughout Wilfred Owens poem ‘Exposure’. It is clearly expressed about how vulnerable the soldiers were during the war and the anticipation created by optimistic attitude towards war. The poem provides the reader with a detailed description of the constant awful and cold weather conditions during one of the worst winters in WW1. It demonstrates that many of the soldiers were exposed to the harsh conditions rather than shot by the enemy. The poet uses reality to set a harsh tone to help the young men not join the war because it is not something heroic. Owen uses all his senses to describe the freezing atmosphere and develops a mourning and descriptive tone.
Owen enhances the readers knowledge of the weather under which the soldiers anguish by using alliteration which is further emphasised by his personification of the conditions. The easterly winds are merciless and icy. The hard consonants ‘d’ and ‘t’ combined with harsh sibilance create a cutting edge to the components which ‘knife’ the men, giving the reader knowledge of the pain the soldiers intentionally inflict. The personified gusts of wind are mad, their sound is conveyed through the short ‘g’ sound of ‘tugging on the wire’, which suggests the tugging effect. The wind is also personified …show more content…
Towards the end of the poem, Owen uses a rhyme to mention that ‘All their eyes are ice’ The use of this metaphor demonstrates that the mens eyes have been frozen. Also, freezing together and the use of the men as a rhyme add to the fact that the soldiers were nameless and the word ‘all’ mean that many of them looked very similar. The poem described the effect of the conditions during war with a very descriptive and emotional way and caught the audiences attention, just like in any other of Wilfred Owens's poem of