Wilfred Owen's “Attitude to War’” -- Analysis of 'Futility'

Futility

by 

Wilfred   Owen

Move him into the sun -

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields unsown.

Always it woke him, even in France,

Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds, -

Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,

Full-nerved, - still warm, - too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth's sleep at all?

Wilfred   Owen's  “Attitude to War”

The First World War left a broad and deep mark on the literature of the World. Aldington’s ‘The Death of a Hero’. Ednund Blunden’s ‘The Undertones of War’, the poetry of R. Brooke, Owen and Sasson are the most remarkable products of the War Literature.  Wilfred   Owen is a realist and exposes the ugliness and horror of the War. He points out the lie hidden in the dictum – “Dulced of decorum est pro patra Mori” i.e.“It is sweet and proper to die for one's country”. His poetry of war underlines – “My subject is War, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity …… all a poet can do today is to Warn. That is why the true poets must be truthful”.

“Futility” is a poem about an unnamed English soldier who died in a snowy evening while fighting in France. Read More Poetry   The poem makes a fancy into pathos and irony that the sun might still revive him. The poet requests some who are present at the spot to move the dead soldier into the sun as the sun is the cause of blossoming of all lives or living organism. But the poet’s wish is not fulfilled. The poet tells us to think how the kind, old sun wakes the seeds – how it once woke the earth on which life developed by the heat of the sun. the poet seems to feel the limbs of the dead soldier still warm which grew out of clay; but all in vain. The poet only questions the purpose of generating life of it was to end in this way in the battle field. Read More Poetry

“Move him into the sun –

Gently its touch awoke him once”,

War begets war only. It can never bring peace by any means. It can only bring the large scale of death and destruction to human life and properly. It is basically – “the organized butchery of young boys”. Read More Poetry   The arm-chair politicians, the War-mongers, the opportunists are the dealers of war; the outcome in the name of profit is nothing but the toll of huge human lives. Soldiers are sent to the war-front only to be doomed. They went the battlefield with the faces ‘grimly-gay’. The ideals of the military strength and supremacy of state are as undependable as forts that are not Walled – “none will break ranks though nations trek from progress”. In a letter to his mother Wilfred   Owen Wrote – “I feel my own life all the more precious and more dear in the presence of deflowering of Europe. Read More Poetry  While it is true that the guns will effect a little useful weeding, I am furious with chagrin to think that Minds which were to have excelled the civilization of ten-thousand years are being annihilated and bodies, the product of eons of Natural selection, melted down to pay for political status”.

 Wilfred   Owen’s had an intense pity for suffering humanity – he knows that it should be alleviated. This is the keynote of ‘Futility’. Here the soldier is killed in the unknown battlefield of France. He stands for suffering humanity. Moreover, the sun which is the nature’s generated power creates all sorts of life cannot restored the life of the dead soldier. Hence, it is also an ironic comment on Christian faith in man. Read More Poetry

The poem ends not with a statement but with three questions which the poet does not answer but leads us to think. The poem sounds a warning against the ghastliness and destructive power of war that causes sheer wastage of life – “Eternal vigil is the price for the gift of poetry”.

Wilfred   Owen is realistic in his outlook and exposes the pity and horror of war. He states his protest against the dehumanizing ugliness of war with a directness which is the result of deep and sincere feelings.  Wilfred   Owen had appalling personal experience of the war; he exposes the hollowness of any glorification of war by poets, politicians and by ‘neurotic cripples searching for their masculinity’.

Ardhendu De

Referential Reading of my other essay:

Owen's  “Attitude to War’”  as revealed in his poem 'Strange Meeting'