Wilfred Owen’s ‘Futility’ is one which seems to be based on his first spell in the battle line in January 1917. It is a poem which uses rhetorical questions, personification and a variety of adjectives and verbs to describe the death of one soldier who before going to battle was a farmer, sowing seeds and living on the sun’s rays. We are uncertain of the cause of his death; perhaps it is the ‘snow’ or maybe it is just coincidence that he was shot at dawn. Owen writes this poem in the sonnet form, perhaps the most challenging form for any English poet, as it is traditionally used to talk about love or the theme of war, and ends his lines in rhymes in the pattern of ABABCDC EFEFGHG. This complicated rhyming scheme creates a jarred effect perhaps reflecting Owen’s shock and disgust at the death of this soldier in this poem, a stylistic feature he uses in many of his poems most effectively in ‘Dulce et Decorum est’, a poem based on a re-occurring nightmare that Owen says haunts him ‘In all my dreams’. It is a dream of the young, helpless soldier Owen watches suffocate and die during a sudden attack after the men were retreating: ‘Flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…I saw him drowning’. What makes this death so alarming is the fact that, although we feel great sympathy for the young boy, this young soldier died simply because he could not put his gas mask on fast enough. His death is both useless, wasteful and is not in any way heroic thus exposing the truth behind the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young soldiers during the war, a poignant yet useless loss of life. It is this theme that is reflected in ‘Futility’, although the soldier has died in battle, his death is ‘futile’ as is emphasized by the poem’s title.
Owen’s disgust at the death of this soldier can be seen through the dismayed tone and angry rhetorical question he asks in the end of the poem: ‘-O what made fatuous sunbeams toil/ to break earth’s sleep at all?’ Through this question Owen seems angry with God for allowing the Sun to bring life on Earth and for creating man from ‘clay’ since all the men’s lives seem to be destined to end in the same pointless way in battle. It is a stark contrast to the wonderful things he describes the Sun to have brought to the ‘cold star’ (i.e. planet Earth) in the beginning of the poem when there is still hope that the soldier might still live. Then, Owen personifies the Sun as ‘kind’ and ‘old’ and uses the verb ‘wakes’ in the line ‘Think how it wakes the seeds-‘ which reflects the Sun’s healing powers and its ability to bring life to a ‘cold’ and ‘sleeping’ world. The fact that the sun’s rays fail to heal the soldier this time is what seemingly leads Owen to blame God for the huge loss of life and is what perhaps makes the soldiers death all the more shocking.
Moreover, although Owen is repulsed by the death of the soldier, through the repetition of ‘this’ in the line ‘Until this morning and this snow’ from the fifth line of the poem the reader realises that the emphasis on the pronoun ‘this’ perhaps tells of how this morning is not like any other and how the sun’s rays will not awaken the soldier from sleeping like it ‘always’ did. However, the hope of revival does not diminish as Owen continues to use descriptions that insinuate that the soldier is still alive, for example, ‘Full-nerved’ and ‘still warm’ which does heighten the sense of loss when the soldier finally dies but at the same time leaves the reader with the sense that his death was inevitable, almost because it was God’s decision to end his life there and then, since it was hinted at earlier on and never really written off from there on.
Blaming God for the tragedies of war is a theme also present in Owen’s poem ‘Exposure’ through the emphatic, declarative statement ‘For love of God seems dying’, but is a stark contrast to ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ where the blame lies with poets like Jessie Pope who is directly addressed to in the line ‘My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/ to children ardent for some desperate glory…’ for lying to the men back home through poems glorifying war and emphasizing the heroic aspects of it. In this poem, the death of the young soldier is also of great shock to Owen who uses an enjambment to describe the boy’s death: ‘…the blood, Come gargling…’ not only to develop the images Owen sees in his nightmare, but also to emphasize a powerful burst of emotions that cannot be contained within one line; an emotion of anger and bitterness towards those who lied to the people, to those who do not see the dream he does every time he goes to sleep and thus do not suffer as he does. Through this, the audience’s reaction turns to shock and sorrow for those who, like Owen, took part in the war as they begin to realise the effect psychological trauma had on the young soldiers.
To emphasize certain points Owen also creates many pauses in his poems ‘Futility’, ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ and ‘Disabled’. In ‘Futility’ pauses in the line ‘Full nerved-still warm-too hard to stir?’ are used to show the gradual loss of life as time slowly passes away. It is effective in that it delays his death to the very end of the poem thereby leading the reader into a false sense of hope and faith in the soldier’s survival before finally revealing it to be untrue. In contrast, Owen employs the caesura ‘Legless, sewn short at elbow…’ in ‘Disabled’ for a different purpose: making a powerful understatement by emphasising that the victim has become immobile. This makes the reader feel great sorrow for the man as, due to him taking part in the war, in order to survive, he must now depend on others to help him. The euphemistic description ‘sewn short’ is then used to indirectly describe the victim as almost half the man he used to be, a complete contrast to Rupert Brooke’s poem “Peace” where the phrase “half-men” is used to describe those who do not go to war. The sibilance of ‘Legless, sewn’ creates a tone of disgust and bitterness thus again echoing his feelings of deep resentment for those who described war as a “game” and as a place where “there’s no ill”, nor grief, despite knowing otherwise. A feeling also reiterated by Arthur Graeme West’s “God! How I hate you”, where West exclaims his hatred for those “pious” poets who’d “been to France” and thus known the truth, yet still supported the British Governments’ misinterpreted reflection of war with poetry that praised war.
In conclusion, through the effective use of personification, repetition, rhetorical questions and other linguistic features, Owen’s sonnet reflects an accurate image of war as being useless and destructive to man and nature alike. Much of the stylistic points are also used in Owen’s later poems ‘Disabled’ and ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ which through a more extensive use of linguistic devices reflect a more horrible and poignant reflection of war…
“…But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
As under a green see, I saw him drowning…”
Wilfred Owen, ‘Dulce et Decorum est’