Bayonet Fear And Exposure Comparison

Both Owen and Hughes present the soldiers to be in a constant struggle as well as in great physical pain and torment. While similar in certain aspects, they also differ slightly when exploring the deeper meaning behind the poems. Bayonet charge focuses on the experience of a lone soldier struggling to stomach the grotesque nature of war, this is suggested in the line " Bullets smacking the belly out of the air". While Exposure focuses on the common experience of soldiers in the trenches who are battling the ruthless and merciless weather, such as that referenced in the line "east winds that knive us". Exposure is wrote from the personal experience of Wilfred Owen who served and died in the war which gives reason for the poems slower and

(Bayonet Charge is wrote in third person while Exposure is wrote in first person). The use of first person in Exposure gives the poem a much slower pace than Bayonet charge contrasting the two greatly. Bayonet charge begins with the adverb "suddenly" which springs the reader straight into the action of the poem, on the other hand Exposure opens with the less action packed line "Our brains ache,". Punctuation is used much more often in Exposure than Bayonet charge, giving Exposure the much slower flow. In this line, a comma is used almost instantly to represent the soldiers tiredness, he is worn out from physical and mental strain on war, While in Bayonet charge a dash is used to carry on the sentence and form the stanza into one long sequence of the soldier running for his life showing his hastiness and possibly fear. The line "Suddenly he awoke and was running - raw in raw-seamed hot khaki" suggests that the soldier is so afraid of dieing he tries to run from the idea fueled by his adrenaline, the opposite of the soldiers in Exposure who appear to have lost all