Futility Summary

Futility takes the form of a short elegy. An elegy, or an elegiac poem, was a form of writing that
had its first depiction in the 16th century, but had not been gratuitously used before. Only a
handful of famous elegiac poems come to mind, chief of which is Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written
in a Country Churchyard. An elegy was considered to be a lament – a crying out for the loss of a
beloved, and was used primarily in the romantic sense. Once more, Owen subverts the trope by
applying it to a soldier, and while scholars who point out Owen’s sense of latent homoeroticism
in his poems are not wrong, one should also consider the closeness that Owen felt towards his
fellow brothers-in-arms.

He wrote, ‘ “I came out in order to help these boys – directly by leading them as well as an
officer can …’. Good or bad, the immense strain put on Owen by pushing him to lead the charge
contributed to his poetry, as well as to the growing sense of misanthropy that he suffered as soon
as he had returned to war. He even wrote to Sassoon, blaming him for making him return: “You
said it would be a good thing for my poetry if I went back. That is my consolation for feeling a
fool. This is what the shells scream at me every time: “Haven’t you got the wits to keep out of
this?”” Sasoon, of course, had done no such thing. Owen was merely overworked, and close to
his breaking point.

Futility follows the aftermath of a battlefield. A soldier has died, and his companions reminisce
on death, and its proximity to wakefulness. Images of death and life are intertwined throughout
the poem, and the final effect is of a poem that is close to Biblical, tortured and beautiful, but
ultimately a lament on the waste of innocent lives.

Futility Analysis
Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
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?
The poem begins by addressing the companions of the dead soldier, urging them to ‘move him
into the sun’. In a land of such gridlocked clouds and perpetual rain, Owen makes much of the
inclusion of light; light, in his poems, takes on the importance of a deity, aside from its obvious
connections to Owen’s own religious upbringing. By prompting the assembled soldiers to move
him into the sun, Owen draws the image of the sun as a life-giving component, of a god who
could wake up the soldier with its touch. He makes the landscape, and the environment, a living
creation, ready and willing to awaken the soldier, and says so as much in the next few lines.
Owen writes, “gently, its touch woke him once / At home, whispering of fields half-sown.”

Given the subject and the context of the poem – a dead soldier – the references to home and to
fields half-sown take on a bittersweet twist. It is not only that he is unlawfully young, dead
because of this war, but the death itself has not allowed him to prepare anything. His fields are
‘half-sown’, he was unprepared to die. The reference to ‘home’ draws a parallel image of
emptiness, of something that has been irreparably changed, and not allowed to return to its
original form.

By drawing the connection between the sun, and home, and how it ‘always woke him’, even in
France, Owen slips in a little bit of hope. The soldier fought for his country, Owen seems to be
implying, partly to protect his home. He has always considered that he would return to it, not to
be dead in a foreign field in France, left to languor among the soil. Thus the first stanza ends on
that lingering trace of hope – hope that is now dashed, as the soldier himself has died.

The second stanza opens with a similar image – that of soil, and seeds. It states, “Think how it
wakes the seeds-” showing that life, regardless of the soldier’s death, will go on. Life has
continued for much grander things, for much bigger things, for much more traumatic things; and,
once again, Owen draws a connection between life, as the soil, and the man, now devoid of it.
Once again, that tremor of hope lightens – as if by burying him, they might be able to bring the
soldier back to life – but it is futile. There is no hope to awaken him, not now that he is dead, but
yet Owen tries again – ‘woke once the clay of a cold star’, he writes, alluding to the Biblical
story of man created out of Earth, of God populating the planet with people he had formed in his
image.

There is so much hope in this poem that, throughout, the reader might even be lulled into
believing that he will wake, that he will come back to the earth. Owen asks, “Are limbs, so dear
achieved, are sides / Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?” Why is it, says Owen, that earth
lives, while man does not? Surely, it should be the other way around. This is Owen’s religious
crises coming to a head, Owen’s understanding of religion slowly skewing towards the agnostic
and the disbelieving.

The final few lines take a philosophical twist. Owen writes: ” O what made fatuous sunbeams
toil / To break earth’s sleep at all?”

Carrying on with the idea that the sun is also God, this is what Owen is asking, begging, to gain
an answer to: why did God bother making man and making the Earth only to lead him to this?
Were we created just to kill each other? The poem ends on the silence that follows, leaving the
questions unanswered, and extinguishing all the sense of building hope that Owen has gently
grafted throughout the poem. There is no answer. There is nothing, Owen seems to be saying, but
blood and senseless death.

Historical Background
The poem has been twice arranged into a musical setpiece before – once, in 1982, when Virginia
Astley set Futility to music, later going to the 1983 album, Promise Nothing, and once in 1961 as
part of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem.

Wilfred Owen's poetry usually describes the grotesque reality of the front-line of WWI;
however, this poem concentrates on the meaning of existence, and the futility (pointlessness)
of war and inevitability of death. The narrator of this poem is having an existential crisis; what is
the point of being born if you are just going to die a few years later? It is common for people to
question death and what comes after death, especially if that person is surrounded by death or
on the verge of death themselves. Soldiers are faced with death every day, the death of their
fellow soldiers and of their enemies; being surrounded by death on a daily basis can lead
anyone to feel betrayed by life and life-givers. The anonymity of this poem allows it to
universal; it can be describing any soldier. This poem also serves as an elegy, which is a song,
poem, or speech that expresses grief for one who is dead, and it is usually melancholy in tone.

The poem begins with the narrator ordering that the man be moved into the sun; this leads us
to believe that the narrator is of a high rank than the person he was talking to, someone of low
rank would not be giving orders to someone who outranked him.

The sun is personified in this poem; the sun is described as gently touching the man, rousing
him from sleep, which is a motherly thing to do. The sun woke the man briefly, and his last
moments were filled with memories of his childhood on a farm. The sun whispers to him, which
is another human quality. Fields half-sown has a dual meaning: first, fields are only partially
seeded (it's the beginning of planting season); second, it is a metaphor for a life not fully lived.
Many soldiers in WWI were barely eighteen years old, and hadn't even had the opportunity to
experience life.

The sun had always roused him before, but this time was different. There is a contrasting of
sensations: sun (warmth and life) and snow (cold and death). The man is unable to be revived,
because the sun is being partially blocked by the snow. The "old sun" is the only thing that can
save him now. The sun is once again personified by the narrator referring to it as "kind."
The sun is life-giving; it makes seeds and men grow. The sun is considered a dwarf star, whose
temperature ranges from three thousand to ten thousand Kelvin (K). A massive star's
(temperature is around 50,000 K. Therefore; a cold star could be referring to the sun, which has a
comparatively cold in temperature. "Cold Star" is also an oxymoron; a star may vary in
temperature, but they are not cold. I believe what the narrator is trying to say here is that like the
seeds are given life, the sun was also given life.

"Limbs" has a twofold meaning: first, a limb is a branch of a tree, which fits in with the nature
them; second, limbs are projecting paired appendages (legs, arms, or wings). The creation of
nature and mankind is very delicate. The narrator doesn't understand how the sun can give life
to seeds, but not a body that is still warm. "Clay" is mud, and comes from the Earth. "Clay grew
tall" is referencing Genesis 2.7: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground -- ;" so
clay symbolizes man. The narrator is asking what the point of life if; why is man born just to
die? Is life pointless?

The idea that the sun can bring a dead man back to life is "fatuous" (foolish) and futile. Men
enlisted because of some promise of heroism made by government propaganda, which
convinced them that they needed to prove their bravery and nationalism by fighting for their
country. Young men were exceptionally susceptible to such advertising; because they think that
fighting in the war would them make them more attractive to women and earn the respect of
their family and friends. The casualties of WWI were high; many boys didn't even get the
opportunity to live or love. The narrator's final question is what made the sun give life to man
at all if it was ultimately just going to take it away.