Wilfred

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How does Owen bring alive the soldiers experience at the front line in the poem ‘Exposure’ and ‘Spring Offensive’? In the poem ‘Exposure' and ‘Spring Offensive', Owen conveys the agonizing experience that the deceived soldiers endured in the front line. Owen himself was a soldier during the war and he experienced the persuasive advertisement of the misleading propaganda posters that encouraged him and various people to enlist in the British army. Owen challenges the society’s expectations of war by revealing the corrupt process of going into war and the atrocious outcomes in various poems such as ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and ‘Disabled’. He brings alive the soldiers experience at the front line by transporting the readers into the reality of war. The word ‘Exposure' is a double entendre which is exposure of the soldiers to the extreme weather and exposure towards danger from the opposition. In addition, the poem ‘Spring Offensive' is based on Owens experience during battle in April 1917. In modern society we regard spring as a time of recreation although, in the poem ‘Exposure' the soldiers experience the excruciating pain from the weather conditions. Moving on the world perceive spring as a season of restoration and beginning. However, in world war one spring was the time where the general would often launch their heavy artillery. Therefore, in the poem ‘Exposure’ winter was cold and it was much harder to fight. In the poem ‘Spring offensive’ it began to get warmer and the soldiers would come out of the trenches and the vicious fighting and dying would begin. At the start of the poem ‘Exposure' the line ‘Our brain ache' illustrates that Owen is inspired by another poet called Odde Nightingale from the line ‘My heart ache'. The tens... ... middle of paper ... ...hat the survivors will never be able to recover their full mortality after what they have endorsed and done. Owen has also used other poems like ‘Disabled’ and ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ to truly clarify the ruthless experience of war. The line ‘as under a green sea, I saw him drowning’ and ‘he plunges at me, guttering, chocking, drowning’ from the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ denotes that the weather effects the lungs of the soldier and that there is nothing that he or anyone can do while he suffocates. As well as Owen uses repetition of the word ‘drowning ‘to emphasize the desperation of the soldier and to create a distinctive sound of helplessness by using onomatopoeia. Throughout the poems the main theme was hopelessness and the reality of war. Owen brings alive the intense horror and experience that the soldiers were force to endure due to the dishonest government.

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