`Futility`... - The Hazeley Academy

Poetry Across Time
Conflict
Introduce
Futility
By Wilfred Owen
Establish
Establish/Discuss
Wilfred Owen's Draft Preface, 1918
This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not
yet fit to speak of them.
Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about
glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power,
except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense
consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can
do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be
truthful.
(If I thought the letter of this book would last, I
might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it
survives - survives Prussia - my ambition and those
names will have achieved fresher fields than
Flanders...)
Establish/Discuss
Definition of 'Futility'...
1. Can you define the word futility?
2. What does its use suggest about the
poet's attitude to war?
3. What other word is used within the poem
that has a similar meaning?
(noun)
1. The quality of having no useful
result; uselessness.
2. Lack of importance or purpose;
frivolousness.
3. A futile act or event.
Establish/Discuss
What is Paxman's
opinion of Wilfred
Owen?
Futility
By Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen was born in Shropshire to an English and Welsh
family and is best known for the war poems written whilst he
served in the trenches in World War One. He died in battle
only one week before the end of the war whilst leading a
frontal assault on a German stronghold. His letters home to
his mother show a man whose initial distaste at the vulgarity
of the sweaty, noisy men he lived amongst transformed to a
genuine love. He was an advocate for the men as well as being
a true military hero and it his intense respect for the soldier
that makes his poetry so powerful.
"Owen is the soldier's poet, because he understands what
soldiering is really like, the horror and fear, alongside the
dry-throated heroism. Owen is the poet for the living."
Justin Featherstone
(a young major who won the Military Cross in Iraq)
Authors's Ideas and Background
Futility
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?
WILFRED OWEN
Poem
Suggest he
can't move
himself.
Makes
us wonder
why?
Technique?
Purpose?
Futility
What does this mean?
What do you think the poem will be
about?
Who is he? What does he
represent?
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, What
profession was
Until this morning and this snow.
he before the
If anything might rouse him now
war?
The kind old sun will know.
The sun is powerful. It brought the
Both stanzas
earth to life but can't help now.
begin with
Think how it wakes the seeds a command.
Making the Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides
reader...?
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Questions the
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
reasons for
- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
giving life in
Why does the poet
To break earth’s sleep at all?
war- suggests
end the poem with
it's pointless.
a question mark?
WILFRED OWEN
What is the point of life being created if it can destroyed so easily?
Framed
Exploring the text:
1
Presentation of nature
* Find all the references to nature.
* How is nature presented? Why?
Use of sounds
* Track the sounds of words in this poem?
* What do you notice? How is Owen using the
sounds of words?
Direct address
* What examples of direct address are there?
* What do they help to achieve within the poem?
Skill: Exploring the Text
Endings:
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made fatuous sunbeans toil
To break earth's sleep at all?
Reflection...
* How does the poet make use
of personification ?
* What signals a dramatic shift?
* Who do you think Owen is
addressing? Explain your ideas.
Skill: Symbolism
Look at the images below:
Can you find the quotation/idea
that they refer to?
Question Time!
1. Is the soldier dead or dying?
What clues are there in the poem?
2. How is the mood of the poem
established at the beginning?
3. How does the title of the poem relate to the content?
4. How does Owen present his ideas about
a) consequences of war b) comradeship
5. Why does the poet use direct language in the poem?
6. What do you notice about the form of the poem?
7. What can you tell about the poet's attitude towards war?
Do you agree with it? Discuss.
Quick Questions
A Soldier's Declaration
I am making this statement as an act
of wilful defiance of military authority,
because I believe the war is being deliberately
prolonged by those who have the power to end it.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers.
I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of
defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and
conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow
soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly
stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that,
had this been done, the objects witch actuated us would now be
attainable by negotiation.
I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops, and I can
no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which
I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the
conduct of the war, but against the political errors and
insincerity's for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest
against the deception which is being practised on them; also I
believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with
which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of
agonies which they do not share, and which they have not
sufficient imagination to realise.
S. Sassoon
(Open Letter, published in The Times newspaper, 31 July 1917)
Additional
Exposure
I
Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us...
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent...
Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient...
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
But nothing happens.
Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
What are we doing here?
The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow...
We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray,
But nothing happens.
Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.
Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,
With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew,
We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,
But nothing happens.
II
Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snowdazed,
Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,
Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.
Is it that we are dying?
Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires glozed
With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;
For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;
Shutters and doors all closed: on us the doors are closed We turn back to our dying.
Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;
Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.
For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;
Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,
For love of God seems dying.
To-night, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,
Shrivelling many hands and puckering foreheads crisp.
The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,
Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
But nothing happens.
Wilfred Owen
Additional
Dulce et Decorum Est.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.-Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Additional
Links:
Analysis of the poem:
http://www.wilfredowen.org.uk/poetry/futility
http://www.brighthub.com/arts/books/articles/68094.as
px
Wilfred Owen area on BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poets/wilfred_owen.
shtml
Article on how Owen's poems have been edited:
http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/owen_edit
ors.htm
Clip about Owen's shell shock:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/understandingshellshock/8059.html
Article by Jeremy Paxman on Wilfred Owen:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3669019/Wilf
red-Owen-The-soldiers-poet.html
BBC Documentary - Remembering Wilfred Owen
(Presented by Jeremy Paxman):
Part 1
http://www.videosurf.com/evideo/2_s8k_dSADkzI
Part 2
http://www.videosurf.com/video/remembering-wilfredowen-2-4-1240074445
Part 3
http://www.videosurf.com/evideo/2_-HbqdE9hBAE
Part 4
http://www.videosurf.com/video/remembering-wilfredowen-4-4-1240074441
(on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/user/MuggedByReality#grid/use
r/9FAC28D0F6622AE5)
Links and References