We experience a very different atmosphere in Spring Offensive to that in Exposure. During the first half of the poem, it is set in the scene of a grassy meadow, the perfect, bright, spring day. Although there are hints of war and death, that feeling is dampened by the overwhelming sense of life as we hear insects everywhere, with calm, pleasant weather and colourful flowers. Owen’s particular choice in the use of third person is one of the reasons as to why the poem can retain such a calm tone at the start. This is because we can see what is going on ( a nice spring day), but we don’t know exactly what the soldiers are thinking, although we are given glimpses of their full emotion as we witness them ‘standing still’, ‘marvelling’ at the long grass, as they are about to do what will surely be their death.
As we progress through the ambush, the pace is accelerated by the rhyme and enjambment as sentences get longer and more descriptive. The climax of the attack is completely contrasting to the start of the poem, with a fast pace and high-impact description combined to give a feeling of confusion, death and destruction. Dramatic language is used such as ‘earth set sudden cups in thousands for their blood’ to portray the horror of the fight that ensues. This is one of the major differences between Spring Offensive and Exposure. Spring Offensive is a contrasting, fast and dynamic poem, whereas Exposure is intentionally repeating and slow, although both undoubtedly embrace the many aspects of trench warfare.
The type of language used in a poem, from dramatic, to slow is very important as it helps express the conditions and feelings of that moment in time, and it also helps characterize the poem. The poem Exposure is characterized by its slow, dull pace and often negative tone which Owen has successfully managed to achieve by having complex sentences with lots of punctuation, causing the reader to keep pausing. On the other hand, spring offensive is characterized by its dynamic, contrasting action, brought to life by Owen’s use of dynamic verbs, with lots of descriptive impact and powerful phrases, such as ‘’chasmed and deepened’ to grab the reader’s attention. Both poems share some common aspects too, for example, they both use repetitive assonance to deliver a slow pace (only at the start for spring offensive) due to the long, drawn out sound of vowels, for instance, ‘low, drooping flares’ or ‘stark, blank’.
Both Spring Offensive and Exposure involve lots of imagery. The main way that these poems do this is with personification. In Exposure, the poem is about how the soldiers are ‘fighting against’ the harsh weather, instead of the Germans. Here, personification is used to represent the weather as the enemy. Owen uses words such as the ‘merciless iced east winds that knive us’. This makes us think that the winds are heartless, forever attacking, showing no sense of relent, and how ‘we’ are suffering helplessly against it.
In Spring Offensive, Owen uses personification in the surroundings. In this case, it is used to make the poem livelier by making the trees breathe, or brambles ‘clutch and cling to them’. This helps to add emotion as well as everything is alive and has feelings. In the later part of the poem, during the battle, personification adds to the dangerous atmosphere, talking about how ‘earth set sudden cups in thousands for their blood’. This makes it seem that everything is dangerous and bloodthirsty, quite contrasting to the first half in which personification gave the impression of life as opposed to death.
Both poems involve lots of emotive and powerful words. These include words such as ‘shudders’ (exposure) or ‘oozed’ (Spring Offensive). Throughout Exposure, there are equal amounts of emotive words and adjectives, such as ‘merciless’ or ‘drooping’. These detailed words help the reader picture the grim situation better as they are specific and descriptive. There is also lots of doubling of adjectives. This technique helps emphasize the noun, such as when the wind is described as ‘merciless’ and ‘iced’, clearly enforcing wind as the heartless enemy.
Spring Offensive, as seen already is a more contrasting poem. This is evident again when there is a higher concentration of emotive words during the battle. They help quicken the pace by adding tension with the use of words such as ‘exposed’. They also add more description and help bring the scene to life. This is especially effective when the poem is in third person as it helps us know everything that the men are experiencing.
Alliteration and rhyme are used in both the poems to help amplify the effect of the other techniques (such as emotive words). This is because alliteration or rhyme help to link together many emotive words or even lines, this makes more impact than just one or two isolated words. This is evident in Exposure, when he says that ‘sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence’, intensifying the effect of the bullets. The sibilance is also a form of onomatopoeia as it resembles the sound of the bullets and the hostile ‘s’ sound adds tension to the atmosphere. In Spring offensive, alliteration is used to intensify the period of the battle, for example, the alliteration in ‘deepened…sheer’ emphasizes the effect of deepness.
Spring Offensive employs full rhyme in its stanzas, with complex rhyme schemes that help intertwine the lines, for example, ‘world,… swirled’, emphasises the two words, and is more memorable. On the other hand, exposure only uses half-rhyme in its stanzas, such as ‘silence,… nonchalance’. Along with emphasis, this could also indicate the feeling of confusion and weariness as he wasn’t able to complete the rhyme.
Similes and metaphors are also used extensively in both poems. As we have already noticed, a form of metaphor used in Exposure is personification. In Spring Offensive, they are used to add description to the circumstances, like when he says ‘summer oozed into their veins like an injected drug’. This makes it easier to picture their feelings and relate to them so we are more involved in the poem. Another strong technique he uses to describe the situation is when he says that the ‘green slope chasmed and deepened’. This dynamic and vivid description is very emphatic, although we know that it didn’t really happen, we can understand how the soldiers must be feeling at that moment because of this metaphor.
We notice a major difference here when compared to exposure: Exposure consists of lots of passive, slow verbs, such as ‘our ghosts drag home’, whereas Spring Offensive Is very active and dynamic, like ‘’the whole sky burned’. This shows us the two very different aspects of war, one part is the trench warfare, in which people die from weather-related problems and the other is like spring offensive, where you are set amidst the enemy as you try to attack them.
There are also many similarities and differences between the feelings that both the poems convey. Both poems represent a contrasting set of feelings, from happy to sad. This is evident in Exposure, when, the men momentarily lapse away from the perpetual feeling of sadness in their present lives and dream about a happier England. In their dream, England is ‘sun-dozed’ and generally filled with life, with ‘blackbirds fussing’ and ‘crickets jingling’ where ‘blossoms trickle’. However, Owen immediately hastens to go back to the original feeling of sadness as he mentions that the men ‘turn back to (their) dying’.
This is the same in Spring Offensive, as although it starts off with a positive, happy mood, it immediately turns to a darker, negative and destructive mood upon the start of the battle. To elucidate this, he starts off mentioning the men being at ‘ease’, as they pondered the ‘warm field’ which was ‘murmurous with wasp and midge’. Then, when it goes into the war, he mentions how the ‘whole sky burned’, how some fell into the ‘fury of hell’s upsurge’ and how they did ‘superhuman inhumanities’, introducing feelings of rage, anger, and immorality respectively, among others.
Both poems also share a sense of loss of faith by the soldiers. In Exposure, this is shown by when he says ‘for love of God seems dying’. This clearly shows how the soldiers doubt the existence of God, as if there was a God, he wouldn’t have allowed this atrocious war to happen. This similar thing is shown in Spring Offensive too, when the emergence of hell (‘fury of hells upsurge’) into the earth shows a lack of help by God. This is further emphasised when they say ‘some say God caught them…’. This phrase sounds sceptical, like a rumour, which is usually not true.
Progressing through the poems, we notice the feelings intensify. In Exposure, Owen has done this by introducing stronger feelings (so the structure is maintained), whereas in Spring Offensive, he has done it by including more emotive and stronger words. After the men stop dreaming in Exposure, there is an intense feeling of fatalism as the men ‘turn back to their dying’ accepting this grim fate, and also a feeling of loss of faith as they doubt God’s existence. This contrasts with the start of the poem, where it merely involved the men sitting around.
In spring offensive, the feelings are more intense as Owen uses stronger language to describe it. This is evident when he refers to how the slope ‘chasmed and deepened sheer’, with ‘surfs of bullets’ and immemorial shames. These intend to give a heightened sense of tension and confusion. In the last stanza, there is also a feeling of inhuman cruelty as the men attack with ‘superhuman inhumanities’. This then transforms to a feeling of shame and a bitter legacy as the men are disturbed by their horrific experiences and so are unwilling to recall events, as revealed by Owen asking the question ‘why speak not they of comrades that went under?’.
There is a repeating sense of futility in Exposure, as the men ‘turn back to their dying’, having given up in the war. The men are also portrayed as weak and helpless as they ‘cringe in holes’ against the ‘deathly’ weather. In Spring Offensive, the men are given a more heroic role, as they are actively involved in the fighting for the freedom of the country.