Compare the presentation of trench life and death

Trench life and death are two very key parts that men in the war had to face.
Trench life wasnt necessarily good and many of the soldiers were definitely
hoping to make it throughout the war without dying. The poems in this
collection present death as a result of the fighting but also as a result of
nature, inactivity and just the inevitability of death itself. Two poems that
show this are Exposure and Ballad of the three spectres.

The intention of Wilfred Owen in Exposure is to show that the horrors of war
can come in many forms, not just through the fighting and shooting. He is
trying to show how inactivity is just as bad as plenty of action during the war.
He focuses on how the men wait in the trenches for a command or an attack,
But nothing happens. While nothing is happening at the front, the men are
slowly but gradually being attacked by Nature and so the time in the trenches,
which should give them some respite, actually makes their experience worse.
The sibilance in the first line merciless iced east winds that knive us
combined with sounds of d and t highlights the kind of pain that is inflicted
on the men by nature. Owen personifies the wind we hear the mad gusts of
wind tugging on the wire and Owen is showing here how nature doesnt care
about the suffering of the men but uses the simile like twitching agonies of
men to show that it is kind of mocking them. This showing that the
conditions in the trenches are equally a bad if not worse than actually going
into no mans land to fight battles as nature makes a mockery of the men and
they still suffer the horrors of war in the trenches.
The intention of Ballad of the Three Spectres is to show that in war death is
inevitable. This poem is about a soldier who meets three ghosts in one night.
The fact that the soldier is a meeting ghost is already a presentation of death
because you can only see and communicate with ghosts if you are dead. In
mud and water cold to the knee Here Gurney has used a real setting of
Ovillers in France to talk about the gruesome conditions in the trenches. This
brings in the aspect of nature in the trenches do not favour the men but apart
from that also brings about the death of these men. Three jeering, fleering
spectres. This shows that the ghosts are mocking the man. The mockery tone
that is common in both poems, but more visible in Ballad of three Spectres,
shows the fight between nature and man. It shows how nature is so confident
that they will always come out on top in the battle against man. It seems that
life in the trenches and on no mans land, is like fight a war on two fronts, and
you cant win any.

Ballad of the three Spectres goes on to talk about three different scenarios for
the soldier. He insinuates that the soldier might try to be a clever coward
soon hell come back on a nice stretcher and laughing got a nice Blighty.
The soldier is not successful as nature will take over from the job of fighting
and hand the soldier his fate of death hell frees in mud. If the soldier tries to
escape the war front, hell still die anyway. He is showing the inevitability of
death. The third scenario is that the soldier does carry on during the war and
does his duties, hell stay untouched till the wars last dawning then live one
hour of agony Gurney is saying here that, you could postpone death but it is
still inevitable. He has shown this through the 5x4 regular rhyme scheme
through out the whole poem which shows that you cant ever change the fact
that no matter the steps you take, one thing is constant and it is that death
will always overcome. He shows that death laughs at the futility of the efforts
of soldiers to try and cheat death by using them 2+4 line rhyme, which shows
that they are being mocked.

The tone of helplessness and despair seems to be present in both poems.

Hell freeze in the mud to the marrow This line shows how the seasons
change and become more deadly as the water and mud in the first line have
now become snow and ice which would freeze the men to death. The imagery
of snow and mud is also used in Exposure. Sudden successive flights of bullet
streak the silence; air shudders with snow. The use of sibilance is similar to
the same reason it was used in the first couple of lines, to highlight the pain.
Owen tries to show how helpless the men are in the trenches by showing how
everything is against them. The snow flakes pause and renew as if they are
deliberately trying to attack the soldiers and it shows that these natural
elements are still a deadly attack to them as if they were fighting their
enemies.
Owen juxtaposes the sibilance of the bullets with the light but lethal f sound
of the flakes of snow in stanzas four and five.

The inactivity of the men in the trenches But nothing happens, alongside
the introduction of harsh weather elements in Exposure shows how the lack
of real battle actually psychologically affects the men and even though the
trenches are supposed to be peaceful, they actually mentally and physically
torment the men and so the same results from the battlefield are replicated in
the trenches.

In conclusion, trench life isnt portrayed in the way most people wouldve
thought it was. Most people back home wouldve thought I was a time of
respite after fighting at the war front. These two poems are quick to dispel
those thoughts as they show that other forces, especially nature, make life in
the trenches just as bad as fighting on the war front. These poems also show
that death is inevitable even if you try to escape it. Exposure is however more
suitable in vividly explaining life in the trenches while Ballad of the three
spectres explains how there really isnt a form of escapism as death will
always find you.