Yahoo Web Search

Search results

    • Uselessness

      • The wordFutility” means uselessness. The poem exposes the uselessness of the creation of life by the sun while many a life ends so carelessly in war before its time. In another sense, we find in war nothing glorious, nothing noble and even nothing praiseworthy. It results only in the huge loss of life. So war is a futility.
      englishguitaracademy.com/wilfred-owen-futility-summary-analysis-questions-answers/
  1. People also ask

  2. "Futility" is a poem by Wilfred Owen, a British soldier during World War I. Written in 1918, the poem elegizes an unnamed soldier lying dead in the snow in France. This image resonates with the poem's speaker, causing him or her to reassess life's value, given death's inevitability.

    • Download

      (aside) She speaks. O, speak again, bright angel! For thou...

    • Summary
    • Detailed Analysis
    • Historical Background

    ‘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...

    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 ...

    ‘Futility’ 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.

    • Female
    • Poetry Analyst
  3. Oct 15, 2015 · Futility’ was one of just five poems by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) that were published before his death, aged 25, on 4 November 1918. Like all of his best-known work it’s a war poem, a brief lyric that focuses on a group of soldiers standing over the dead body of a fallen comrade.

  4. Feb 29, 2016 · Analysis of ‘Futility’. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker asks for the dead soldier to be moved into the sun in the hope that it will wake him as it would from sleep. However, faced by the finality of death, the speaker breaks down into anger, feeling hopeless about life itself.

  5. Owen’s final angry barb condemns the sun itself as ‘fatuous’ l.13, a word not dissimilar to the ‘futility’ of the poem’s title, as both mean useless / pointless. Each term has a soft ‘f’ followed by a hard ‘t’, allowing Owen’s anger to be almost spat out.

  6. “Futility” As a Representative of Life and Death: The poem starts when the poet is asking another person to move the dead body of a soldier gently. It mainly describes the aftermath of a war. He is telling him to turn his face toward the sun so that he could see it.

  7. Feb 2, 2024 · Wilfred Owen’s “Futility” is a poignant reflection on the senselessness of war, encapsulated in a short but powerful poem. Written against the backdrop of World War I, where Owen himself served and ultimately lost his life, the poem is a personal testament to the horrors he witnessed.

  1. Listen to Audiobooks Free with a 30-Day Free Trial. Sign Up Right Now to Start Listening. 500,000+ Audiobooks including new releases, best-sellers, classic and 10,000+ free books

    3 Audiobooks Free Trial - $0.00 - View more items
  1. People also search for