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Futility

Futility. Wilfred Owen. Futile = useless. The poem is a meditation on the purpose and meaning of life, prompted by the death of a soldier. (The poet was himself a soldier in the First World War [1914 – 1918] and was injured before being killed a week before the war ended .)

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Futility

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  1. Futility Wilfred Owen

  2. Futile = useless The poem is a meditation on the purpose and meaning of life, prompted by the death of a soldier. (The poet was himself a soldier in the First World War [1914 – 1918] and was injured before being killed a week before the war ended.) The speaker describes how the sun used to wake the dead soldier back home in England, and later in France where he fought – until the morning of his death. He thinks about the power of the sun: how its warmth makes seeds sprout into life, and how once, millions of years ago, its warmth started life on earth. Finally he asks, if the sun cannot bring the soldier back to life now, why did the sun start life on earth in the first place? In the poem:

  3. The poet is a soldier in WW I who’s friend (another soldier) has just been killed. He pleads that they move him into the sun. Move him into the sun – Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown, • The sun’s gentle touch [Personification] use to wake him in the mornings, back home in England. • ‘Fields unsown’ = 1. The actual fields of England that stay unsown because all the men are off fighting in France / 2. The soldier will never have children

  4. Always it woke him, even in France, • The sun always woke the soldier, even here in France during the war. Until this morning and this snow. • But today it is not waking him. • The snow = ‘Coldness of the dead body / of war’ (metaphor)

  5. If anything might rouse him now • If there is anything that could wake him up now… The kind old sun will know. • …the sun will know what that could be. [Personification]

  6. Think how it wakes the seeds - • Think how the sun makes seeds grow Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. • And how the sun once brought life to the earth. [Cold star = Earth]

  7. Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides, Full-nerved – still warm – too hard to stir? • Is it so difficult to wake this dead soldier, whom just died? (His body is still warm) Was it for this the clay grew tall? • Was this the only reason why this soldier grew up; to die in a futile war?

  8. O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth’s sleep at all? • Why did the sun bother to bring life to Earth at all?

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