1.

While this is a command (imperative), it is

tender in tone- revealing the soft treatment
of the soldier. Care is taken with the
soldier’s lifeless body.
(NOTE: Contrasts with the brutality of a
battlefield (e.g. ‘Dulce’ “flung him”).
Move him into the sun—
3. Personifies the sun as its gentle
2. Sun is depicted in positive terms through
touch contrasts with the cruelty of
a metaphor as a gentle giver of life, a
possible saviour of miracles (reference to
war.
religion).
4. “home” connotes a nostalgic feel of
safety, peace and release.

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Soldier was most likely a farmer

6. ‘awoke’, ‘home’, ‘unsown’ and ‘woke’

uses assonance dragging out the long
‘o’ sound asserting a despairing tone-
mournful as a response to the soldier’s
situation. Can also be connected to a
motherly sound.
5. Onomatopoeia of ‘whispering’ adds to
the motherly tenderness of the other
soldier’s actions. A whisper is also
metaphorical for the lost potential of this
soldier who will never sow the fields again
and lived a life half lived.
1. Owen shifts between
past tense in the previous
line: “Always it woke him,
even in France”, to a
present tense in “until this
morning”, which contrasts
the soldier’s earlier life at
home with his current
situation.
2. “Snow” contrasts with the 3. A resigned (defeated) tone that
sun and is thus a metaphor for connects to the lamenting tone of the
lost hope and death.
title ‘Futility’. Using low modal language
to suggest hope has been lost and the
soldier is in futile circumstances.
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know. 4. The repeated motif of
waking (‘awoke’, ‘woke’ and
‘rouse’) emphasises the
contrast between being awake
5. Personification of the sun- presents and alive and being paralysed
the sun as wise and as all knowing or dead.
which connects it to God, thus, the
sun ‘kindly’ pleads to the heavens for
this soldier.
1. Stanza two also opens with
an imperative “Think” using
instructional language,
suggesting a focus on the
senseless reality of the
situation.
3. Alliteration of the ‘k’
2. Metaphorical links between the sun as the sound repeated to
harbinger of life itself. The sun has brought emphasise the harsh, cold,
earth to life but cannot revive the soldier.
brutal environment. Shifts
the atmosphere from soft
and gentle in stanza 1.

Think how it wakes the seeds—

Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

4. ‘Seeds’ and ‘clays’ are used as

biblical imagery - Reference is the Genesis 2:7

story of Adam and how God made Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his
Adam from clay. The ‘sun’ woke the nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
‘clay’, and began life. Source: http://biblehub.com/genesis/2-7.htm
 2. Rhetorical question- further emphasises Owen’s bewildered state that
1. The tone becomes more bewildered-
the soldier cannot be resurrected (Questioning God/religion). If God’s
reference to limbs reflects the persona’s
existence is real why can he not rouse this soldier as he has done before?
refusal to believe the truth that limbs still
warm cannot be roused (awoken).

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides

Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
3. Punctuation of dashes and commas
separating out the phrase ‘still warm’
4. The layering of rhetorical questioning becomes more
suggests the frantic looking at and/or
demanding, ironic and bitter.
touching of different parts of the
Questions the point of life on earth, questions the
dead soldier’s body, with increasing
destruction of God’s creations and questions the purpose
desperation.
of war- none of these can be answered- why have we
(“clay”) have been created?
 Fatuous= meaningless and ineffectual/ Toil= to work hard. Why did the
1. Bitterness of the final couplet is lacking substance- Owen accuses the pointless sunbeams work hard?
heightened through the plea of frustration sunbeams of being pointless.
and anger of the pause - followed by “O”

—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth's sleep at all? 2. The plosive assonance
of ‘f’ and ‘t’ emphasises
the disgust and bitterness
of this suggestion as he
spits the words out. Again,
3. Use of aporia (series of rhetorical questions) leads to a
reinforcing the title.
spiteful tone by suggesting the sun, along with the speaker is
fed up with the futility of life itself- demanding the reader to
ponder the question of the purpose of life. Owen suggests it
is futile for the sun to have awoken the earth in the first
instance.