Fuutility In Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen portrays the atrocities of war by utilising vivid images and descriptions to give the audience a greater understanding of the hardships and loss endured throughout war. This has been highlighted throughout Wilfred Owens poems, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, ‘Futility’ and ‘insensibility’. Through the use of poetic techniques such as aural and visual imagery, similes, metaphors and alliteration, the mental, physical and emotional impact suffered by soldiers during war is being explored. [Thesis statement]

Owen’s aim was to recount the horrific sights and sounds that soldiers leaving the front line endured during a gas attack. The title of the poem itself ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’is Latin and is a famous poem meaning it is sweet and honourable

The title itself defines the poetic focus as Owen is discussing a futility, the first stanza begins with soft, tender words “Move him into the sun”. The sun is a natural element being personified throughout the first few sentences. The tone of this first line is hopeful and optimistic, this positivity continues through to the last line of the first stanza. The assonance “at home, whispering of fields unsown.” Depicts the soldier’s efforts to jolt a frozen soldier back to life. The use of the word “snow” in the fifth line is a contrast to the “sun” as we usually consider the sun as warmth and an association with life, where as we think of coldness and snow to be associated with death. The last two lines of the first stanza are an appeal to the sun or a biblical reference to god to bring the soldier back, the personification “the kind old sun” is an effective line as the sun is represented as ‘all knowing’.The second stanza begins with a tone of anguish depicted by the soldiers, “Think how it wakes the seeds” is a demand telling the audience what to do, and “seeds” is a symbolism of growth in nature and new beginnings of life. Alliteration occurs in “clays of a cold star” which emphasises the harshness and coldness of a star, this stanza contains three rhetorical questions, “Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides…too hard too stir?”

The metaphor “Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers” shows that the soldiers arenow impervious and insensible to pain. Within the second stanza men have metaphorically reached a stage of the physical and psychological battering’s of war, they do not care about themselves anymore/ “Even themselves or for themselves” is a reflection that the soldiers are no longer able to feel. Owen claims that these soldiers shouldn’t have an imagination as living a peaceful life at home after war is merely impossible. Within the third stanza Owen is using third person which creates a distance between Owen and the soldiers. In the fourth stanza Owen has contrasted ‘Insensibility’ and ‘Futility’ “which we march taciturn, because of dusk” as he refers to his men in France Within the fifth stanza, Owen switches to first person and seems to be contrasting himself and the “wise” poets who are not yet insensible to what