Also the wind is so strong that it moves objects. ‘We hear the mad gusts’, meaning that the wind is not just blowing hard it is raging. ‘Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles’. Here the wind is pulling at the barbed wire, as if a man was stuck in it forever twitching in excruciating pain.
Throughout ‘Exposure’ Owen keeps repeating the fact that nothing happens and there is no fighting. However he says,
‘ Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey’
This army is not made up of German soldiers, but lines of grey clouds coming to attack them. Again Owen uses a metaphor, ‘bullets’ to create the image of fighting but it is just a metaphor for the rain, which to me make the rain sound hard and painful and deadly.
The weather in ‘Exposure’ gets worse towards the end. It grows very cold which gives the soldiers hypothermia and makes them dreamy. In the last verse it so cold that everything freezes including the soldiers.
The weather in ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is only wet but not cold. It is not mentioned directly but the conditions of heavy, deep mud suggest to me that it has been raining heavily.
In ‘Spring Offensive’ the weather is a stark contrast to that in ‘Exposure’. It is sunny and warm, which to me creates a feeling of natural beauty and how lovely unspoilt nature is. The day is warm and the sun is shining, but this makes the men feel relaxed and does not help to prepare them for the horrors of battle to come.
In the second verse Owen uses a simile,
‘For though the summer oozed into their veins,
Like an injected drug for their bodies pains,’
This suggests that the weather has a strong effect on the troops morale, making them feel much better just like a painkiller. To me this suggests that all the pain that they are feeling is not all physical but mental as well, that all the bad weather wears them down, and makes their minds ache. The good weather is a change that heals their minds but unfortunately it has come too late. It is as if nature is giving them a good send off.
The conditions in which the soldiers had to fight were atrocious. Owen highlights this in ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by using a simile in the first line,
‘ Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,’
to create the image of these men bending and straining under the weight of their backpacks.
‘Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the sludge,’
This line to me creates the image that the soldiers are slowly plodding along a muddy track coughing and spluttering and they are so tired that their legs keep colliding with one another.
In the next few lines Owen says that they start to head away from the front line towards shelter. In the sixth line the phrase ‘blood-shod’ appears, which to me suggests that the men's feet have been covered by a layer of dried blood, which is acting like a pair of shoes. Owen uses a metaphor ‘Drunk with fatigue’, to show how uncoordinated they are through exhaustion.
Even though they have finished their fighting for the day and are heading home they are still not safe. The gas shell drops behind them and because they are so tired and it is so muddy most of the men do not hear it. One man bravely sacrifices himself to warn the others.
Owen uses lots of different ways to create the scene and the emotions of the moment. He uses short sentences ‘ Gas! Gas! Quick boys! ‘ and powerful descriptive words ‘ An ecstasy of fumbling’ to create an impact and a scene of panic. He then uses a simile to describe the man who shouted and saved them
‘ Like a man in fire or lime’
This to me appears like the man is burning but from the inside.
In ‘Spring Offensive ‘ the weather has lifted the sprits of the men but the conditions are bad because they have to fight. The men do get rest and are allowed some time where they are at ease, but they are only preparing for the battle that lies over the ridge. Nature does not want to let them go,
‘ Where even the little brambles would not yield,
But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands
Owen uses personification to say that nature is trying to stop them from going and getting killed and the alliteration echoes the sound of the brambles dragging at their uniforms.
However, in ‘Spring Offensive’ the soldiers actually experience battle when they are sent to attack a dug in set of Germans over a hill. As soon as the soldiers reach the top of the hill all hell breaks loose,
‘ And instantly the whole sky burned
With fury against them;’
In the next line Owen says,
‘earth set sudden cups in thousands for their blood’
This to me creates the image of lots of little craters formed by the bullets and shells, which will catch to blood as it runs down the hill.
‘Of them running on that last high place
Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up
On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge,
Or plunged and fell away past this worlds verge,
Some say God caught them even before they fell.
Here Owen is portraying a scene where the brave soldiers are running across the hill exposed. Many of them are knocked off their feet by the invisible bullets and some being throw by the explosions as if hell was coming up from beneath. Words like ‘hot blast’, ‘fury’ and ‘hells upsurge’ create a picture of rage and the heat of battle. Also he mentions that some people believe that the soldiers were already dead before they got shot.
The oxymoron in the last verse ‘superhuman inhumanities’, the great acts of horror, implies that in war the hero and the devil are one and the same.
Also, in ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ the soldiers are caught in a gas attack. In contrast to the first verse the second is full of action. The oxymoron, ‘ecstasy of fumbling’, seems strange at first but then becomes clear as a perfect way of describing the controlled panic of soldiers with only a few seconds to fit their masks.
‘But’, sums it up. One man is too late and is seen through the ‘green sea’ of mustard gas, ‘yelling’ and ‘stumbling’ in pain, ‘drowning’ under the gas, ‘guttering’ and ‘choking’. Owen still has visions of the man crying out for help, which helps us to understand how much it affected him and how horrific it must have been.
He then invites us to walk ‘behind the wagon we flung him in’ so that we can see his ‘white eyes writhing’ and hear ‘at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs’, which shows just how vile the experience was. His face looked ‘like a devil’s sick of sin’; these similes to me create the image of a man who has resigned himself to death.
From this evidence we can conclude that Owen opposes the whole principal of war as he has experienced it first hand. He believes it is a terrible waste of time and innocent life. In these poems Owen leaves always leaves his message in the last line, in ‘Exposure’ he repeats the fact that nothing happens and that his men are dying without gain, in ‘Spring Offensive’ he writes
‘Why speak not they of comrades that went under’
Where he asks why the men that survived don’t talk about their fallen comrades if it was so glorious. And in ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ the last two lines carry the message
‘The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori’
Which is Owen expressing his feelings about telling the young men that it is fine and honourable to fight and die for your country, he believes it is a lie now that he has witnessed it first hand.
Also in conjunction with Owens messages in the last lines and during the rest of his work he portrays his feelings about war and its affect on him. He believes war is futile and is a pointless exercise where nothing is really gained nor lost. In his writing Owen describes his faith in God and how it falters during the war. He believed that God was great and good but after the horrific scenes he saw and the conditions he had to endure he began to doubt God and his morals.
Owen and the other First World War poets changed the face of world poetry but writing some of the most memorable and moving poetry of which had never been seen before.
They did away with the army’s conventional poets who never got anywhere near a battlefield and glorified war. The men were the real poets and wrote what they really felt. I believe they changed the face of modern poetry for the better.
