Question

1) What sort of mood does Wilfred Owen establish in the first stanza of Exposure?

Answer 1

Owen’s choice of words in Exposure powerfully, but simply, describes the extremes to which he and his men were exposed for two days. The poem is dominated by words from the semantic field of the weather, most of which are qualified by terms with negative associations:
•‘iced east winds’ l.1
•‘mad gusts’ l.6
•‘rain soaks’ l.12
•‘clouds sag stormy’ l.12
•‘Dawn massing in the east’ l.13
•‘ranks of grey’ (cloud) l.14
•‘air .. black with snow’ l.17
•‘flowing flakes’ (snow) l.18
•‘the wind’s nonchalance’ l.19
•‘Pale flakes ‘ (snow) l.21
•‘snow-dazed’ l.22
•‘frost’ l.36
•‘ice’ l.39