Futility
Wilfred Owen
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?
VOCABULARY
Futility - uselessness, pointlessness, failure
Half-sown - sown seeds are ones which have been scattered in soil to start growing,
‘half-sown’ suggests that the fields had started to have seeds scattered on them, but
this process has been disrupted or is unfinished
Rouse - wake up
Limbs - arms and legs
Stir - to move something, but also to cause someone to wake from sleeping
Fatuous - stupid and childish
STORY/SUMMARY
The poem opens on a Winter morning, in the middle of warfare. A dead soldier is lying
on the ground, and the speaker commands the reader to move his body into the sun
(we, as readers, are placed in the position of soldiers on the battleground having to
deal with a fallen comrade). We’re told that the touch of the morning sun gently awoke
, this soldier once, when he was at home - reminding him of half-sown fields - perhaps
a farming job that he had to finish. The sun woke him always, even when he was
fighting in France, until this morning when the snow covered the ground, and he lay
there stiff and cold.
The speaker asks us to think of the sun - how it wakes up seeds and brings them to
life. Once, it woke up the soil on the ‘cold star’ that was Earth, and brought life to the
planet. Does it seem impossible, then, that limbs and sides of a body that is still
part-warm as it dies could be revived by the sun too? Is this war and pointless, futile
death what nature was created for? What god or cosmic mechanism would bother to
make the sun shine its childish and foolish light on the earth, light that worked so hard
to create life, when it has ended so pointlessly?
SPEAKER/VOICE
The speaker in the first stanza starts with a practical tone, commanding the reader
to take action as if we were placed in the position of soldiers in warfare, ordering us
to move the soldier’s dead body into sunlight in the hope that the sun’s warmth may
revive him. The second stanza, however, shifts tone dramatically and becomes at
first more philosophical, pondering the way in which life is created on earth and how
pointlessly it can be taken away.
LANGUAGE
● Extended metaphor - sunlight is used throughout the poem in an extended
metaphor to represent a nurturing, life-giving force (also a kind of
personification as the ‘touch’ of the ‘kind old sun’ has an awakening power,
similar to a parental figure). It could be said that in the poem it spiritually
represents the force of a god or higher cosmic power, as a force that creates all
life on earth.
● Seasons - the setting of the poem is in Winter, when coldness prevails over
warmth, as indicated by the concrete noun ‘snow’. It creates an ambience of
difficulty, as Winter months are symbolically a time of hardship and death in
literature. There are references to happier times, with the pastoral imagery of
‘fields half-sown’, harkening back through the use of past tense to a point in the
