Futility
By
Wilfred Owen
Futility (noun) = uselessness /
pointlessness / senselessness
Futility… WWI
Soldiers in WWI (German and British) who
have frozen to death
Futility in WWI
Key Vocabulary
Fatuous
silly / childish / idiotic / absurd
Sonnet
poetic form (14 lines: octet + sestet)
Imperative
command / demand / order
Personification
giving a non-human thing a human
quality (the anger of the guns)
Repetition
same word - repeated…
Rhyme
words that sound the same
More key vocabulary…
rhetorical question
question that is not meant to be answered – but
to make a point AND make a direct connection
with the responder!
“what would you do if it was you in the trenches?”
metaphor
Describing one thing by saying that it IS
something else.
“the clay grew tall” “the sun wakes the seed”
Contrast /
juxtaposition
Two opposite images or ideas next to each other.
Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.
caesura
Commas, dashes, semi-colons, colons, ellipses in a
single line of a poem… it breaks up the flow of
each line and each idea in the poem.
enjambment
The continuation of an idea or description
without pause, punctuation or break, from one
line of poetry to the next
Futility
Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it awoke 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?
Read the text
Futility
imperative
2. Copy the poem.
Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it awoke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
3. Find an example of each
of these 10 language
features and label:
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?
e.
By Wilfred Owen
a.
b.
c.
d.
f.
g.
h.
i.
j.
imperative
personification
repetition
rhyme
rhetorical question
metaphor
parallel construction
antithesis
caesura
enjambement
Futility
Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it awoke 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?
4. It is a
sonnet.
Futility
Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it awoke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
rhetorical questions.
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?
Model Analysis Paragraph
Owen’s WWI sonnet ‘Futility’ challenges the responder to
find justification for war. Wilfred Owen writes a
sequence of three rhetorical questions in the sestet.
“Was it for this the clay grew tall?” and his final question
wonders, almost bitterly, why we were given life since we
have wasted it : “- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil/ To
break earth's sleep at all?” The modern reader would
agree with Owen but in 1918, when the poem was written,
these sentiments would have been seen an unpatriotic.
The power of the questions is that they demand an answer
– but there is no rational answer that could be given.