Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The first-person narrator of this poem is an unnamed soldier fighting in the trench of Europe during World War I
Form and Meter
The poem is comprised of eight stanzas written in free verse adhering to no particular form or style.
Metaphors and Similes
Simile: “we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire, / Like twitching agonies of men among its barricades.” Metaphor: “All their eyes are ice.”
Alliteration and Assonance
“Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence” replicate the hissing sound of bullets whizzing close overhead.
Irony
The entire poem is constructed upon the irony represented by the repetition of the phrase, “But nothing happens.” This lack of anything happening becomes a portrait of hell on the battlefield when the conventional portrayal of war is that it is becomes a hellish nightmare once the action starts.
Genre
World War I poetry/Anti-War poetry.
Setting
A battlefield trench during winter somewhere in Europe sometime during World War I.
Tone
The tone is bleakly realistic and takes a shockingly critical (at the time) view toward war as a patriotic duty.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Protagonist: The speaker and his fellow soldiers: Antagonist: The weather, boredom and the futility of war.
Major Conflict
Unlike most war poetry, the conflict here is not between the two opposing armies, but between soldiers and the physical and psychological impact of bitterly cold weather during periods between open hostilities.
Climax
The point of the poem is that there is no climax. The poem ends right back where it begins with the speaker reiterating what has become his mantra: “But nothing happens.”
Foreshadowing
Line 5 which brings the first stanza to a close foreshadows what is to come: “But nothing happens”
Understatement
Breaking the monotony of the recurrence of “But nothing happens” is what may be rightly viewed as the most shocking moment in the poem. The understated simplicity of its formulation as a rhetorical question expecting no answer makes it all the more powerful: “What are we doing here?”
Allusions
The opening words of the poem, “Our brains ache” is considered by many to be an allusion to “Ode to a Nightingale” because Owen made no secret of being highly influenced by the author of that poem, John Keats.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
“Shivering ranks of grey” is a metonym used to describe soldiers in their uniforms.
Personification
The harshness of the winter weather is personified throughout as being equipped with a sentient motivation to cause pain and create misery for the soldiers: “Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army / Attacks once more”
Hyperbole
The constant refrain “But nothing happens” is, of course, a hyperbolic assessment of any situation taking place during wartime.
Onomatopoeia
N/A
