Futility - Wilfred Owen

Question 1

How does the poem Futility convey Owens perspective on conflict?

Answer 1

• Portrays warfare as being wasteful and futile.
• “was it for this the clay grew tall?”
• ” O what made fatuous Sunbeams toil, to break the earth’s sleep at all.”

Question 2

What technique does Owen use in the words “Move him” and “Think how” at the beginning of each Stanza, and how does this affect the audience?

Answer 2

• Use of imperative language.

- It’s commanding tone provokes the audience to link the two stanza’s and it’s ideas.

Question 3

What is the Sun a metaphor for?

Answer 3

• Religious connotations due to the life giving properties.
  “Move him into the sun” “If anything might rouse him now, the kind old sun will know”.
  This Godlike figure is “kind” and omniscient. (GOD)
• The warmth is also a symbol of hope.

Question 4

How is this warmth made redundant?

Answer 4

• Made redundant by snow

“Until this morning, and this snow.”

Question 5

What is heavily contrasted between the two stanzas?

Answer 5

• The life giving properties of the sun, to a dying or dead soldier(s).
  “Move him into the sun”
  “Are limbs so dear achieved, sides, full nerved, still warm - to hard to stir?”

Question 6

How does the use of words like “clay” and the divine properties of the sun display how Owen conveys his perspective?

Answer 6

• They implement elements of religion, which was prevalent in his upbringing.
• Allusion to the bible means he uses religion to convey perspective.

“Once, woke the clays of a cold star”
“ Was it for this that the clay grew tall?”

Question 7

“Think how it wakes the seeds,

once woke the clays of an old star”. How does Owen use the evolutionary process to structure his poem?

Answer 7

• The evolutionary process “Evolves” the poem to lead to the final question. - “Was it for this that the clay grew tall?”.
• Acts as a build up. “Think of how it wakes the seeds…” calls upon the reader to notice the extent of such divine power, to only be eventually “too hard to stir”.

Question 8

How is the image of the sun in the first stanza contrasted in the second stanza?

Answer 8

” Kind old sun” to “Fatuous sunbeams”.

Signifies loss of hope and faith in religion. Extent of hopelessness.