1. Futility By Wilfred Owen Futility (noun) = uselessness / pointlessness / senselessness

4. Futility… WWI Soldiers in WWI (German and British) who have frozen to death Soldiers in WWI (German and British) who have frozen to death

5. Futility in WWI

6. Key Vocabulary Fatuoussilly / childish / idiotic / absurd Sonnetpoetic form (14 lines: octet + sestet) Imperativecommand / demand / order Personificationgiving a non-human thing a human quality (the anger of the guns) Repetitionsame word - repeated… Rhymewords that sound the same

7. More key vocabulary… rhetorical questionquestion that is not meant to be answered – but to make a point AND make a direct connection with the responder! “what would you do if it was you in the trenches?” metaphorDescribing one thing by saying that it IS something else. “the clay grew tall” “the sun wakes the seed” Contrast / juxtaposition Two opposite images or ideas next to each other. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. caesuraCommas, dashes, semi-colons, colons, ellipses in a single line of a poem… it breaks up the flow of each line and each idea in the poem. enjambment without pause, punctuation or break The continuation of an idea or description without pause, punctuation or break, from one line of poetry to the next

8. Read the text Futility Move him into the sun— Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it awoke 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?

9. Futility Move him into the sun— Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it awoke 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? By Wilfred Owen 2. Copy the poem. 3. Find an example of each of these 10 language features and label: a. imperative b. personification c. repetition d. rhyme e. rhetorical question f. metaphor g. parallel construction h. antithesis i. caesura j. enjambement imperative

10. Futility Move him into the sun— Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it awoke 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? 4. It is a sonnet.

11. Futility Move him into the sun— Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it awoke 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? rhetorical questions.

12. Model Analysis Paragraph Owen’s WWI sonnet ‘Futility’ challenges the responder to find justification for war. Wilfred Owen writes a sequence of three rhetorical questions in the sestet. “Was it for this the clay grew tall?” and his final question wonders, almost bitterly, why we were given life since we have wasted it : “- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil/ To break earth's sleep at all?” The modern reader would agree with Owen but in 1918, when the poem was written, these sentiments would have been seen an unpatriotic. The power of the questions is that they demand an answer – but there is no rational answer that could be given.