explore how the writer conveys his attitudes towards the theme of war in Exposure

Explore how the writer conveys his attitudes towards the theme of war in Exposure.

In Exposure there are many different types of attitudes conveyed in the poem for example there is boredom, anger, sadness, fear, love and many more.
The way which Wilfred Owen portrays all these different types of attitudes is very effective because it brings more out of the story which he is try to tell us. You see if there be situated no attitudes in this poem, and then it would just be tasteless and monotonous.
Exposure includes a lot of repetition on the attitude boredom, because if you look on the last line of stanza 1, 3, 4 and 5 it says ‘but nothing happens’. This portrays boredom because he wants something to but as it says nothing is happening so he is bored. The reason he maybe bored is the fact that it’s late at night and that he’s been sitting in the trenches for ages waiting to go back to fighting. I can tell it’s night time because in the first stanza is says ‘wearied we keep awake because the night is silent’.
You can tell there is a lot of anger used in this poem. You can straight away tell this by the fact that he is at war, he can only be at war if he is angry at the enemy for first of all attacking his home country and also his home country’s allies. Also there is another way Wilfred has shown anger in this poem and that is by writing ‘love of God seems dying’. Wilfred must have inserted this in because usually Gods love is and always will be invincible. So him putting that it seems dying makes me think that he is getting inpatient of God not helping them out in the war, not stopping people who he loved and cherished from dying and also not bringing peace to this evil. So no wonder he has written Gods love seems dying, as anybody would start to wonder if God is real if he is allowing all this evil and suffering to happen. Somebody would have to be very angry to be losing the love of God as it takes a lot to do so.
Now moving onto the attitude of sadness, Wilfred has inserted sadness very well in Exposure. An example of this would be in stanza 6 where it says ‘slowly our ghosts drag home’. I find this as an attitude of sadness because he is thinking of his own ghosts meaning that he is imagining himself being dead and then most possibly being carried home in a coffin. So basically his own mind is saying that he’s dead a man anyway so there is no point him carrying on. See there in that little sentence he is thinking about home and also in other stanzas he is also thinking about home so either him thinking about home is giving him hope or just it’s a way of taking his mind of the matter of death. Other ways which Wilfred has shown the attitude of sadness to us, is by using pathetic fallacy of the weather, for example when in stanza 3 it says ‘the poignant misery of dawn begins to grow’, this is the sign of sadness starting to rise up. That bit of the text is most defiantly pathetic fallacy because it is using words which we would describe human emotions. The reason why I also believe that it’s the sign of the sadness beginning to come through is because after that bit of text is said he starts talking about his home and also death. The first bit of when this happens is in the 5th stanza where it starts talking about grassy ditches and blackbirds fussing. This bit shows that he is talking about home because where he is right now would not be a place with grassy ditches and blackbirds fussing as it would be more like craters where bombs had been dropped and also mud land with dead bodies scattered along it. So this proves he is most likely talking about his homeland as it’s a different landscape. Also relating to this is resignation, as he is resigned to the probability of death, the example to go with would be ‘we turn back to our dying’. This again proves that he just wants to die rather than carry on fighting and watch all his friends around him die.
Another type of attitude which Wilfred has used is confusion, an example of him using confusion is when it says the word ‘dazed’ and also ‘what are we doing here’. I believe that why they are asking what are we doing here is because they don’t actually know why they signed up for this duty, as all they know is that it’s the only way to save their homeland. But other than that they don’t know anything, as they don’t know when the enemy is going to attack on them next and also when the war will finally be won.
The way Wilfred Owen uses half rhyme in the stanza makes it feel like everything is not what it should be, an example of half rhyme being used is ‘wire’ and ‘war’ as you can see these 2 words do not rhyme but they both have a meaning to war and also are close to rhyme and that’s why it’s called half rhyme.
Fear and tension is a another big attitude used in Exposure. For example when it says ‘sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence’, give evidence that it is also tense then bullets appear out of now where and make silence go to loud.
There’s a sense of anxiety also inside this poem as it says in the first stanza ‘sentries whisper’. This shows a sense of anxiety because they are whispering and usually when you whisper its either to stop other people from hearing what you say or its from anxiety, which of course these whispers are. The reason why they have anxiety is because they believe it’s too quiet so they must think that the enemy are planning something.
Also the way he describes the weather also portrays the theme of war because he is using words like knife, merciless, shuddering and also fingering stealth. I believe he has used words like these is because it gives the weather more of a dramatic atmosphere to it as if he said the weather just as how it was, like for example the sky was grey would be too bland but because he has used words which are related to war makes it also sound better but also ties it into the poem more.
So overall, all these themes which Wilfred Owen has used inside his poem relate to the theme of war. For example in wars it is mainly anger, sadness and also fear as you would never see happiness being portrayed in a war zone as it’s just about killing to create peace. So I believe Wilfred has used the use of all the attitudes very well inside this poem to explain the theme of war to people.