Almost all of the words or phrases with which the lines end show sibilant qualities: “sun”, “once”, “unsown”, “snow”, “seeds”, “star”, “sides”, “stir”, “sunbeams” and “sleep”. These help to add a passionate quality to the poem, as well as encouraging the reader to recognise its speech-like qualities. For these reasons, the poem seems less like poetry for the purposes of art, and more like a strongly felt political speech containing arguments against the improvidence of war – something one might expect to hear at an anti war rally, or in Parliament. This effect is intensified by the grammar of the sentences, punctuated with dashes; they are split into small clauses: “Full nerved, – still warm, – too hard to stir?” This emphasises the words in a way that seems increasingly heartfelt, as if Owen’s suppressed anger and frustration at the situation are escaping with force. This structure and its effect is also especially evident in Dulce et Decorum est; the section that is most clearly directed at Jessie Pope is ordered in a way that shows, not frustration as in Futility, but certainly anger with the same stilted, broken up style (this time, however, with commas in place of dashes): “If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace”, and “His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin, / If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs”.
Despite the obvious portrayal of Owen’s anger in Futility, parts of the second stanza also seem to portray a kind of bitter sarcasm. He questions the meaning and purpose of life itself, even the existence of the earth, if the only result is the suffering and death he and his fellow soldiers have endured and seen: “Was it for this the clay grew tall? / – O what made fatuous sunbeams toil / To break earth’s sleep at all?” The sadness of the situation is shown here through the submissive attitude, as if such a twisted and sarcastic view if the only remaining means of dealing with a comrade’s death. This attitude of bitterness combined with humour is prevalent also in both The Last Laugh: “Machine guns chuckled, ‘Tut-tut! Tut-tut!’” and “Love languid seemed his mood, / Till, slowly lowered, his whole face kissed the mud.” and Disabled: “To-night he noticed how the women’s eyes / Passed from him to the strong men that were whole” and “One time he liked a bloodsmear down his leg”. To me, this manner becomes synonymous with the ultimate concession of defeat; Owen is so war weary, his anger seems set to dissolve into a resigned and yet still disbelieving admission of surrender.
Owen’s lexical choices also appear to convey the depth of his despair – phrases such as “if anything might rouse him now” and “too hard to stir?” display a finality that suggests the sense of a last resort – of being forced to face the seriousness of the circumstances. This sadness is similarly conveyed in Disabled in the use of a transferred epithet in the final stanza – “Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes”. In this description, it is, of course, not the years that are sick, but the soldier living through them. This has an almost hyperbolic effect, increasing the drama of the description, making the anguish of the infirmity as well as the length of the time (almost like a jail sentence) resonate more powerfully with the reader. Owen uses a form of transferred epithet in Futility also: “Woke once, the clays of a cold star”. It is clear that the clays are cold, rather than the star or planet itself, however the image of a “cold star” paints a decidedly bleak image – furthering the general tone of austerity and desolation that Owen has developed. A semantic field comprising the body parts and active references to the soldier himself emphasises his tangibility – the fact that his body is still present and presumably complete. Phrases including “Move him into the sun – / Gently its touch awoke him once”, “sides / Full-nerved – still warm”, as well as words such as “limbs” and “stir” emphasise this, and encourage the reader to share Owen’s dilemma: When his friend seems so physically present, almost as if he is only sleeping, how can it be impossible to wake him?
Ultimately, it seems that Owen’s feelings of grief are universal – sentiments shared by millions of other young men. This is in stark contrast with his narrative style in poems such as Dulce et Decorum est and The Sentry, where the stories are personal and told in specific and meticulous detail. Instead, Futility captures the emotions and experiences (as it is almost certain that every soldier in World War One would have experienced such potent feelings of loss). It is my belief that Owen was very much aware of this all-encompassing style and its subsequent power, whereas it is no less powerful that the use of his first hand accounts in other poems, it appeals in a very different way subtly conveying the vast scale of the tragedy of the war, without sacrificing his individualistic and personal approach to poetry as a way of chronicling the Great War.
