Futility - by Wilfred Owen

Futility

Move him into the sun -

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields unsown.

Always it woke him, even in France,

Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds, -

Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,

Full-nerved - still warm - too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth's sleep at all?

Our opinions

What we like:

• Its development of mood
• How it questions existence
• Show of contrast
• The use of subtle vocabulary

What we dislike:

• Its vagueness
• It can take a while to fully understand

Structure and language

Structure

• Written in 14 lines like a sonnet, not structured like one
• Poem has two seven-line stanzas.
• Two-stanza structure reflects poem's change in tone, from hope and confidence to despair.

Language

• Title of poem strong, showing Owen to be straightforward with ideas.
• First stanza positive force . Words such as "move him", "gently", "whispering", "rouse" suggest soft, motherly force.
• Second stanza image of sun becomes negative.
• Expressed in expression "cold star".
• Contradiction between star, which is hot, and description "cold" revealed as an oxymoron.
• Shows that sun may be literally warm but has no feelings.

Summary

• Begins with statement suggesting present action

• Sun seen as positive

• Second stanza begins with different statement. Narrator no longer thinking of the man who is dying but life and death generally.

• Therefore the man has died and sun has made no difference.

• Sun then becomes object of the poet's anger.

Stanza no.2 annotations

Examples include:

• 'limbs, so dear achieved' suggests metaphor for children, being loved by parents.

• 'too hard to stir' hints death, indicating that children were simply let go.

• 'Was it for this the clay grew tall?' suggests questioning whether our creation was only for war.

• 'fatuous sunbeams toil' reveals sudden negativity towards sun. Suggests sense of betrayal.

Background Notes

• Written by Wilfred Owen, during the time of the great war (World War One).
• Suggests poem is likely to have relation to at least one aspect of conflict.

• 'Futility' means pointlessness or uselessness.
• Suggests poem is probable to have a sombre mood/tone

• Wilfred Owen suffered from shell shock during the war.
• Suggests poem could have quite a fearful or emotive theme.

Mood and themes

Mood and themes

• Poem is elegy, traditionally long but this one is compact.
• Poem about friend transforms into elegy for mankind.
• Anger comes through personal knowledge of dead man's past.
• "fields half-sown" refers to farm dead man grew up.
• No conclusion reached, anger expressed as rhetorical questions.
• Angry not just at war or sun but at whole of Creation as well.

Stanza no.1 annotations

Examples include:

• Use of word 'gently' suggests delicacy/kindness of the sun.

• 'awoke him once' suggests man is now dead.

• 'whispering of fields half-sown' suggest man should return farming.

• 'kind old sun' further supports sun, suggesting it to be friendly and wise.

• 'snow' shows contrast with mention of fields before.