Essay Questions

Stanzas 2 and 4 both end with questions asking, respectively, “What are we doing here?” and “Is it that we are dying?” What is intended effect of this technique?

The significance of introducing this technique does not lie merely with the content of the question. Both of these are profound philosophical queries that people in myriad situations outside of war often contemplate. They are Big Questions as opposed to, for instance, how long before my enlistment is up and I can go home. An indication of this largesse of meaning is pronoun choice: the speaker asks what “we” are doing here and whether or not “we” are dying. The element which adds pathos to the philosophical nature of the questions, however, is the fact that they are rhetorical. The speaker not only expects no answer but realizes the futility of even asking. And yet he asks anyway in a reflection of the futility of war to make the world a better place.

How does this poem act as a subversion of the genres of both war poetry and anti-war poetry?

“Exposure” certainly qualifies as both a war poem and anti-war poem. It is a war poem in the sense that it is a brutally realistic depiction of what life is like for a soldier on the front lines. That the soldier is ultimately convinced his efforts are an exercise in futility succeeds in casting it firmly within the genre of anti-war poetry. From the opening lines and all the way through the end, the narrative also consistently subverts both genres by presenting a slice of the horror of the battlefield experience that is rarely the focus of war stories. One expects to see actual battle imagery in which the soldiers on the other side are the enemy in a war poem or, conversely, intellectual breakdown of the political system operating at a safe distance from the soldiers in anti-war poetry. “Exposure” breaks the mold by presenting weather as both the enemy to be fought and a common experience uniting both sides an anti-war revelation that we all sides are equal victims of the horrors of war.

What literary technique is used throughout the poem to replicate the experience of pervasive bitter wind constantly chilling soldiers to the bone?

Sibilance is a term for a literary device especially common to poetry which manipulates words containing an “s” sound to create a kind of subconscious soundtrack. In this case the “s” sound is exploited for its similarity to the hissing sound made strong breezes and gusts. The integration of sibilance for this purpose is found throughout the poem, becoming most obvious in the fourth line of the opening stanza:

“Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous.”

Sibilance is also used to tremendously creative effect as part of the overall strategy to connect the idea of weather as the enemy to reality of the opposing army as the enemy. Having already used sibilance to establish the cold as weaponry of war, the poet engages it for the purpose reminding the reader that now the soldier must face both dangers at once. The “s” sound is used to recreate the hissing sound not of the wind slicing through the air, but of bullets slicing through the wind:

“Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.”