Compare the poets’ attitude to conflict in ‘Futility’ and one other poem
The poem ‘Futility’ by Wilfred Owen deals with the speaker’s desperation after the experience of death on the battlefield which leads him to question the sense of life as well as sense of creation in general.
At the beginning, the whole situation is vague for the reader. The verbal indistinctness points to the role of the poem attributes by using only words of someone who is immediately involved in the situation and affected by it. The reader has to try and work things out, to try to understand the speaker's inside and outside situation, and see through his verbal reaction to understand the poem itself. This is shown as at the beginning of poem, he starts with an imperative of "Move him into the sun-" (line 1). The speaker starts his speech by addressing the people who are beside him and the cesura at the end of the line leads on so that after it, he speaks to himself. The switch of addressees, from those around him to himself already indicates that two levels that will be dealt with throughout the whole poem, the factual language of the imperative verb ‘Move’ refers to the rational side, while the emotional language use in the two stanzas represents the emotional side which takes over immediately after the cesura break. The pace and rhythm of ‘Futility’ is slow and reflective, with commas and other punctual devices such as the cesuras at the sentence at the beginning of each stanza, used regularly to make the reader read the poem slower, adding a grieving feel to the poem.
