In the second stanza, the pace changes to one of urgency; Owen using the word “Gas” in swift repetition demonstrates this. By doing this Owen illustrates the urgency of a life and death situation, which requires the need to put on their gas masks. Owen describes a horrific scene unfolding in front of his very eyes, a scene of a man dying a horrible death because he was too slow to put on his mask. He vividly describes the horror that he sees through the visor of his own mask, the sight of the gas engulfing the air around them and how it is affecting the poor soul who is caught out. He goes on to say, “As under a green sea, I saw him drowning”, this shows how the man is gasping for clean air and not this air that is poisoning him.
In the following stanza, Owen goes on to further demonstrate his gift for visualisation, with the use of strong emotive words such as ‘Guttering’, ‘Choking’ and ‘Drowning’, not only shows how the man is dying but also that the use of onomatopoeia suggests the sound is of the soldier dying in a very painful and frightening way that no human being should ever endure and could ever imagine in their wildest nightmares. One of Owen's talents is to convey his complex messages very proficiently and demonstrates that here because without the use of the emotive language, the scene could not be set.
In the fourth stanza, it reads, “ If in some smothering dreams you could pace/behind the wagon that the we flung him in”, here Owen is suggesting that the horror of the scene that he has witnessed, is forever eternalised into his dreams. Although this soldier died an innocent, the war allowed no time to give his death dignity. That in turn makes the horror so much more poignant and haunting. Owen also describes what the young lad’s face looks like “Devils sick of sin”, this painfully illustrates how the life is ebbing away from him and that the skin is just hanging on his face.
In the fifth and final stanza Owen makes a heroic and very public stand, by challenging the newspaper columnists, back home in England, that if they had seen the horrors that he had witnessed, then maybe, they would not be so quick impose their naïve views of how good it is to die for “Ones country”. This is echoed in the last three lines of the stanza “My old friend, you would not tell with such high zest/To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et decorum Est Pro patria mori.
Owen is more famous for his angry and emotional poems such as “Dulce”. Although, when in consideration to his much quieter poems, it is surprising to find that they too can also make a strong impression on the reader. One such poem is “Futility”, this poem is in direct contrast to “Dulce…”which conveys Owens anguish, despair and horror of the war. ‘Futility’ begins with the tone of the poem being hushed, gentle and somewhat hopeful.
In the first stanza, it begins with “Move him into the sun-Gently its touch awoke him once,” this suggests that this is a conversation between a nurse and her colleague and that the warmth of the sun on his face, may just wake a distant memory of a time long before the war.
The lines “Whispering of fields unsown”, may suggest that spring has arrived bringing with it the promise of new beginnings and new life. “Even in France” seems to refer to the war in the trenches of the Somme, where this patient is probably locked in a time when he witnessed untold horrors such as “Dulce” and has since died. By using the term “The kind old sun” suggests that the warmth of it will inspire the completely or near lifeless patient to wake up.
In the second stanza, Owen carries on with his reference of the awakening of new life and hope that comes along with spring and the warmth of the sun by suggesting to “Think how it wakes the seeds”.
Unlike most of his poems where Owen is questioning war and people. Here, it is plain to see that “Futility” has barely controlled emotion to it and that Owen appears to be questioning life itself. His lack of powerful imagery by the use of words, only serves to highlight his patients plight, which is being put across as a lack of hope and a quiet resignation towards life itself.
In the first stanza, Owens use of assonance such as ‘whispering’ and ‘sleep’ demonstrates sounds that give the poem a quiet tone as if the reader is whispering; there are no pleas to the lord or anyone else for that matter. Also, the lack of physical and horrific visualisation only proves to make the poem more intensely psychologically emotional with the idea of a catatonic patient with no true hope of recovery.
In the second stanza the tone changes to one of questioning hopelessness and of quiet resignation with the onset of death. Owen demonstrates this by asking the reader to think, “Think how it wakes the seeds- Woke, once, the clays of a cold star”. Here the reader can see that the suggestion of clay as being cold and lifeless and that when the sun tries to warm clay, it in fact bakes it hard.
In lines 3, 4 and 5, “Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides, Full-nerved – warm-to hard too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall?” the reader can begin to ask the age old questions, “why?” and “Are we here for just this reason, too die for the sake of pointless wars that occur through mans own greed of power?