Futility: Poetry and Owen
Futility ~ Wilfred Owen
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?
Wilfred Owen was an English poet and soldier who many argue was one of the most famous World War One poets. After enlisting in England to serve his country, he was sent to the Western Front to be a front line soldier in 1916. Though he did not know at the time, through enlisting as a soldier Wilfred's life changed dramatically as he witnessed first hand the atrocities of war. Although he endured many hardship Owen grew as a poet and published 5 poems before he died, Futility was one of them written in 1916. In the poem 'Futility', Wilfred Owen presents war as a senseless waste of human life and questions the existence of war and eventually of life itself. It also shows Siegfried Sassoon’s influence on Owen and how Owen now sees war for what it really is; a struggle between imperial powers looking to expand their lands and the atrocities this greed brings to the young men fighting. Owen’s views on human existence are inevitably prone to evil which leads to the conclusion that life is a futile exercise. The title of this poem captures its main theme; the pointlessness of human sacrifice and, indeed, of life itself.
In ‘Futility’, Owen takes the form of a short elegiac lyric the length of a sonnet though not structured as one instead has been divided into seven-line stanzas. Through this technique Owen is able to juxtapose both first and second stanzas by showing the change in tone from hope and confidence to loss and despair.
Owen also uses repetition
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?
Wilfred Owen was an English poet and soldier who many argue was one of the most famous World War One poets. After enlisting in England to serve his country, he was sent to the Western Front to be a front line soldier in 1916. Though he did not know at the time, through enlisting as a soldier Wilfred's life changed dramatically as he witnessed first hand the atrocities of war. Although he endured many hardship Owen grew as a poet and published 5 poems before he died, Futility was one of them written in 1916. In the poem 'Futility', Wilfred Owen presents war as a senseless waste of human life and questions the existence of war and eventually of life itself. It also shows Siegfried Sassoon’s influence on Owen and how Owen now sees war for what it really is; a struggle between imperial powers looking to expand their lands and the atrocities this greed brings to the young men fighting. Owen’s views on human existence are inevitably prone to evil which leads to the conclusion that life is a futile exercise. The title of this poem captures its main theme; the pointlessness of human sacrifice and, indeed, of life itself.
In ‘Futility’, Owen takes the form of a short elegiac lyric the length of a sonnet though not structured as one instead has been divided into seven-line stanzas. Through this technique Owen is able to juxtapose both first and second stanzas by showing the change in tone from hope and confidence to loss and despair.
Owen also uses repetition