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FUTILITY ANALYSIS
So we move on then to ‘Futility’ by Wilfred Owen, excellent poem, very, very short but
very, very rich and detailed.
We start then with the structure and we’ve got, first and foremost we’ve got instructions
at the beginning of both stanzas, which is very interesting. The first one is obviously
a command to move the person into the sun and the second one is much more futile, much
more ridiculous, thinking that the person will be woken or empowered or regenerated
somehow by the sun, when obviously that person is dying. The person speaking here is probably
going to be the Commanding Officer, speaking to the troops and obviously this is one of
the troop’s thoughts. Owen here is actually the person thinking about it. So they move
him into the sum and then the person hears ‘think how it wakes the seeds’ you know,
maybe just trying to rally the troops, give them some kind of hope, give them something
to look forward to, but we can see in this, it’s quite ridiculous and fanciful and futile
and it’s not really something that a person in their right mind and in a normal situation
would actually think or believe, you wouldn’t compare the raising of seeds to the raising
of human beings. But the person does it here and again, it’s just a very futile idea
coming through and that echoes first and foremost throughout the poem.
You’ve got the tone change from the very beginning. It seems very gentle and kind of
loving and caring and there are very positive images about the sun and how it’s always
been there for the person and woke them, etc., but here we have the first line of discontent
in the fact that it’s not going to happen and then even though there’s a little hope
in the sun afterwards, what happens in the second stanza is very kind of damning of the
sun and its power and its power to do anything, which is again the idea of futility and hope;
futility in thinking that something good could come out of this situation. And I suppose
we have to kind of mention the reference to the sun being perhaps God and obviously the
way maybe God has left the situation or God has left them to fend for themselves or God
is not actually looking after this person. You can read it that way and we’ll come
to that idea a little later on.
We’ve also got the list of questions at the end which are very powerful because they’re
what’s left with us. They’re what we think about; how futile and terrible and how weak
the sun is and how this is not worth human life because man wasn’t created, as it says
here. So this basically means was this what man was created for? Just to die on foreign
fields for a strange cause or really it would have been a ridiculous thing for the sunbeams
to have worked so hard to put life on earth if this is all that it was going to be for.
So the tone and the questions there give us the idea – and also there’s no more suggestions
here, we have the idea here that there’s something that we can do and here’s something
we can hope in but then towards the end – here straight after that – we’ve got no more
answers or no more options, there’s nothing we can do, we just think about how pointless
this all was. So obviously the tone change through the list of questions, the rhetorical
questions and the list of three, three questions in a row, just really gets us thinking about
all the different sides of it.
So the first one is thinking about the lack of power the sun has, and this one’s the
futility of man’s life and then this is the futility of all life on earth, so obviously
the three build there in a list to make it more powerful.
Looking then at the meanings. Well, obviously it’s the futility of war because this person’s
lost their life, they’ve left their home where they were genuinely woken all the time
and it seems like they had a promising life, ‘the whispering of fields unsown’, that
could be several references here. It could be the work he had to do that he had to leave.
It could be future plans that he never actually got to fulfil. It could be the family that
he never got to have. So you could look at ‘unsown’ and really analyse it, but again
because of the war, he’s not managed to do all of this because he’s died somewhere
in France and that shows how futile the war is, it’s just pointless, it’s not really
what humans (and obviously this whole last section here) were designed for and it’s
a waste.
We’ve got the idea here of memories, the main one being the memory of the life back
home before he’s actually got to France and obviously his life there and how much
more pleasurable it was and the relationship he had with the sun and perhaps the relationship
he had with God before certain things were challenged. But the other memory that we have
here is obviously one of human history, or human theology at least, and the idea of man
growing into the current state he is for however many millions of years or thousands of years,
depending on what your personal beliefs are, and the memory of humanity being something
great and something that you really were set to achieve and something that was really going
to be exceptional on the earth; but then look what it’s been reduced to, taking part in
this war which has just wasted another life.
So we’ve got the idea of belief and the idea of losing faith and obviously this ties
in massively to God and the sun. So here maybe God was in this person’s life, he actually
felt how close he was to him and the personification there kind of aids that reading, because you’ve
got the idea of perhaps the spirit of God talking to people or the idea of people feeling
connected to God and it is quite common for people to believe that religious elements
do speak to them, especially within the Christian faith. So people might feel that they have
a connection because of that and that was his connection there. And obviously the personification
again, the kind, old sun, giving God an age, being massively old and the kindness is what
we normally associate with the idea of God and so they believed that God here will help
him in some way. And also the reference to the fact that throughout history the sun’s
been worshipped by countless communities and generations, so it could well be taken that
way if you want to. But obviously this person might believe that for a while but then he
loses faith because he no longer believes in the power that this ‘cold star’ now
has and the fact that it’s called a cold star is interesting because it says it has
all this power but it’s not being kind or warm; and warm obviously there is not just
in terms of heat but warm in a generosity, it’s not giving life to this person.
Also the line straight afterwards ‘are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides Full-nerved –still
warm, - too hard to stir? That’s a really powerful line because the person’s there
looking at the body and this is probably one of the really interesting points where we
echo the loss of faith. The person’s looking at the body and they’re saying - look these
limbs with all these sinews and muscles and blood vessels, etc., etc., amazingly created,
they’re worth so much, they’re not missing anything, he’s still got his limbs, they’re
still fully nerved, they could still do everything, communicate with the brain, that they should
and they’re still warm, there’s still blood flowing through them. Is this too hard
for God to stir? Is it too hard for God to actually just give this person another chance,
another life? How easy would it be for God to do that? And yet God doesn’t do it. So
here we can have the idea of him losing faith in God, if we take in the reading of God.
At least, or if anything we’re losing faith in humanity, the fact that people can do this
to each other and leave each other in this situation.
And then we’ve got the bitterness really coming through, especially in the last line.
Obviously it kinds of weaves its way in all through the last stanza and just here in this
first one, ‘until this morning and this snow.’ So this is the morning that the person
dies and obviously the bitterness there and this snow, they’re stuck in the snow, you
believe it’s a snowy trench, but also the snow is an idea of things fading away, snow
never really lasts, it’s not kind of long standing, snow always melts. So here’s this
person and the snow’s representing the person’s life force and then the decay and the slipping
away of the person’s life. And obviously, the idea of the cold in the snow as well,
references the cold lack of generosity from God being given from the sun.
We’ve also got this last one. This is a really, really great line as well. ‘O what
made silly sunbeams work so hard to break the inanimate earth.’ So why would the sunbeams
give earth life if this is what it was going to do? So again the bitterness is showing
there, he doesn’t see a point in life in general, there’s no point in life at all
being around if this is all that’s going to happen.
So we move on then to images and obviously you’ve got this kind of sun and the idea
of God and it’s power or lack of power. So obviously we have the positive references
to the sun or God at the beginning, how it always woke him and gave him life at the beginning,
brought him from his sleep, but then we have the lack of power in that it’s no longer
choosing to do it and the reference to the pointlessness if God was going to create something
so tall and spending and wondrous, why lot it rot like this? Why let them all go to waste?
You could look at that.
We’ve got the image of the kindness in the dying moment where they’ve moved this person
into the sun. It’s kind of very nice, a last thing to bring the person into a positive
state and again try and help the person.
We’ve got the image of farm life and the wonderful life he had back home, and the reason
I’ve picked this one is because we’ve got the idea of the fields unsown and I think
that could be literal in terms of he might have been a farmer and this was work he had
to do, so you can take it that way. But it also could be the fields unsown, it could
be a metaphor for his potential, the whole life he was going to lead and everything he
was going to have and how powerful it was. And it would be ‘whispering of fields unsown’
also in a family he was going to have and develop, etc., so the idea there of the farm
life, it kind of resembles more than just literally being on a farm, it’s the idea
of just his life, the way it was supposed to pan out, not dying on a field on France.
And obviously the contrast with that with his current situation, having the sun gently
waking him before he goes on with his work and now he’s just dying in the snow. It’s
a huge contrast there. And again, obviously that’s a very futile waste of life.
Here we’ve got the idea perhaps of evolution as well. The ‘growing tall’ bit obviously
is a reference from the evolutional chart that shows the common ancestors we had with
certain primates – excuse me I don’t know the names of them – but as far back as we
go. I think there’s six or seven that actually go along there. In fact if you find it there’s
a picture which has a great addition to it, it’s got the six or seven different states
from which humans have developed or their ancestors have developed from and then it’s
got an addition at the end; the last one is man fully formed, you’ve got another one
of a man crouching facing the rest of it and then firing back at them and it’s kind of
showing that we’re going to destroy the earth. Sorry, I don’t know why I threw that
in there! Anyway if you find the picture it’s worth thinking about.
So the idea there of the evolution or obviously the genesis, the idea of man’s first creation
and how he was created from clay. And the clay is really important in terms of images
because obviously the person’s returning to the ground, he’s going to die again;
which again links to the futility – what’s the point of bringing him up from the ground
if he’s just going to go back into the ground in a horrible way?
Looking at the language then. We’ve got several things. We’ve got the oxymoron of
the cold star, which is a really, really interesting image because the star should be massively
powerful, massively warm and obviously what we’re looking for here is like a warm touch
of life but this star is choosing to be cold at this time and obviously the reference isn’t
to a cold star in temperature, it’s just in it’s not giving life at this very moment
and when he refers to it earlier he calls it ‘the kind old sun’ and very soon his
bitterness and the futility of having any hope in the kind old sun, he suddenly just
calls it a ‘cold star’ so really it sounds like the star isn’t doing what it’s supposed
to be doing.
Just before we’ve got the personification of the sun, again in perhaps God. Obviously
it whispers here and it touches him and that’s kind of a very personal image, it’s almost
loving and caring and gentle. So again it ties in with the set-up of the poem. The first
few lines kind of show this kindness and then it just makes the bitterness all the more
strong because we had that opposing contrast at the beginning.
And then we’ve got rhetorical questions at the end, which I’ve gone over a couple
of times. Remember they build and they’re very kind of bitter and they make us question
life and humanity and the point of it all and obviously that shows the futility and
the ways that the sad and tragic things in war happen, the ways that it can actually
make us feel.
And then we’ve got the word ’Him’ referred to right at the beginning. Move ‘him’
into the sun and gently woke ‘him’ and again, it always woke ‘him’ and the idea
of it’s not my friend or my dear one or John, etc., it’s just ‘him’, it’s
everyone, not anyone that dies in war, so it’s a very encompassing poem, it’s not
just about this one event that ‘he’ experiences, there’s people all across the world in battles,
etc., feeling the same thing, losing the same amount – another human life.
So the effect on the reader then? Well it really makes us think about the loss of life
and how life isn’t really valued in this scenario and how people actually die. There’s
actually a brilliant piece in – I don’t know if you’ve read the book – Birdsong
by Sebastian Faulks, there’s a really, really interesting scene in it where he sends, I
think it’s like 20,000 men down a hill to try and attack someone and then they just
get gunned down and obliterated and then at that point the General who commanded the troops
down had just seen them just get obliterated and he just rips his Crucifix from his neck
and throws it to the ground - that’s how my memory recalls it anyway - and it’s just
the idea of how damning and how futile the loss of life is and obviously that’s really
being echoed here, even though it’s only being echoed in one person.
Then we’ve got the effects on the reader. We’ve got the sacrifice of war, what people
are willing to go through, because this person still would have signed up to the war and
wanted to make a difference and perhaps been sold the lie and told that it was glamorous
and things would be good and he’d be OK, but obviously that’s not how it works out.
It’s a huge sacrifice that people were willing to make and makes us think about the sacrifice
that people did make. Millions and millions of people died and that’s why we have the
Remembrance Sunday to commemorate that and honour that, again remembering that sacrifice
and the people referred to in this poem, and himself.
And it makes us think about the last moments in a person’s life. What are they going
to be like? Who’s going to be around? Who’s going to be there with you? Where will you
be? Will you be dying in the comfort of your own home with loved ones around you passing
off painlessly in your sleep or will you have just been under attack of some kind and then
just die in a field in a foreign land? So yeah, it just gets you thinking about last
moments as well.
So like I said, there’s so much more you can actually out and there’s loads of analysis
available all over the Internet, etc., so whatever your teacher’s done with you and
hopefully something I’ve said here has been of use. But just keep adding to it because
the wider your knowledge of all the poems, the better prepared you’re going to be for
any kind of question that comes up. 1