Futility - Wilfred Owen

Question 1

Themes? (4)

Answer 1

: Life, death, war, suffering

Question 2

Tones? (2)

Answer 2

Melancholic, critical

Question 3

Context? (2)

Answer 3

• Written in 1917 before Owen went on to win the Military Cross for bravery, and was then killed in battle in 1918:
• Of his work, Owen said: “My theme is war and the pity of war”. - Despite
  highlighting the tragedy of war and
  mistakes of senior commanders

Question 4

Meaning and purpose? (3)

Answer 4

• Speaker describes war as a battle against the weather and conditions. - Imagery of cold and warm reflect the delusional mind of a man dying from hypothermia.
• Owen wanted to draw attention to the suffering, monotony and futility of war

Question 5

Language? (6)

Answer 5

• “Our brains ache” physical (cold)
  suffering and mental (PTSD or shell
  shock) suffering. - Semantic field of weather: weather is the enemy.
• “the merciless iced east winds that
  knive us…” – personification (cruel and murderous wind); sibilance
  (cutting/slicing sound of wind); ellipsis
  (never-ending).
• Repetition of pronouns ‘we’ and ‘our’
  conveys togetherness and collective
  suffering of soldiers.
• ‘mad gusts tugging on the wire’ –
  personification
  -Alludes to the myth of Prometheus to enter into an existential pondering on the futility of life.
  -Juxtaposition: Futility” juxtaposes two large and abstract concepts: life and death.

Question 6

Form? (3)

Answer 6

• Caesura seems like a deliberate attempt to make us pause and think about the soldier’s humanity - it is used after the words ‘home’ and ‘him’
• Repetition of “but nothing happens”
  creates circular structure implying never ending suffering Rhyme scheme ABBA and hexameter gives the poem structure and emphasises the monotony.
• The set of rhetorical questions shifts the speaker’s previously calm and hopeful tone to one of confusion and
  discouragement.

Question 7

Structure? (3)

Answer 7

• 14 lines (sonnet form) – but no regular meter, lines are not the same length in terms of syllables, so it doesn’t fit as a sonnet Can also be considered as an elegy
• The poem is not written in a rhythmic meter consistently with sonnets or elegies – life lacks formal structure, and it is pointless to try and find order in it. Trochees-stressed syllables force the reader to pay close attention.
• Pararhymes (half rhymes) (“nervous / knife us”) only barely hold the poem together, like the men.