Compare the ways in which Owen portrays the extreme situations which the soldiers experience in Exposure and Spring Offensive

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Compare the ways in which Owen portrays the extreme situations which the soldiers experience in ‘Exposure’ and ‘Spring Offensive’

In both ‘Spring Offensive’ and ‘Exposure’ Owen uses subtle ambiguity which entices the reader leaving them wondering whether Owen is using one meaning of the word or the other. The ‘Spring’ in ‘Spring Offensive’ could mean the soldiers were fighting during the season of Spring, however it could be referring to a forward sense of momentum as in ‘Springing’ forward into battle. Out of these possibilities the first seems the more likely of the two as the poem makes lots of references to nature in spring time. The title ‘Exposure’ however, is probably the more ambiguous out of the two, as it has two equally plausible meanings. It could simply be talking about the medical condition caused by being ‘exposed’ without protection to the effects of harsh weather, as the soldiers were. On the other hand Owen could have intended it to have other connotations, meaning that he was ‘exposing’ the truth about the harsh conditions the soldiers had to endure during the war. The title ‘Spring Offensive’  an oxymoron as the word spring is associated with warmth and love and happiness whereas offensive is a word of war and aggressiveness which could have meant to contrast the idea of new life in the world during spring with the death that will obviously arise from the offensive. The use of this ambiguity manages to attract the reader even before the poem has begun.

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Owen’s opening to ‘Spring Offensive’, “Halted against the shade of a last hill”, suggests both calmness in “shade” and an implication of forebodingness in “last”. The effect of these two contrasts creates an unnatural sensation in the reader’s mind that something deadly is looming over this “last hill”. Also Owen refers to “a” hill not “the” hill suggesting this is just another unknown hill that they have to climb but this just happens to be the last one. This is dissimilar to ‘Exposure’ in which Owen effectively uses personification to introduce us to the harsh weather conditions that the ...

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