Upload
clarissa-bell
View
225
Download
0
Tags:
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Futility
ByWilfred Owen
Futility (noun) = uselessness / pointlessness / senselessness
Futility… WWI
Soldiers in WWI (German and British) who have frozen to death
Futility in WWI
Key VocabularyFatuous silly / childish / idiotic / absurd
Sonnet poetic form (14 lines: octet + sestet)
Imperative command / demand / order
Personification
giving a non-human thing a human quality (the anger of the guns)
Repetition same word - repeated…
Rhyme words that sound the same
More key vocabulary…rhetorical question
question 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?”
metaphor Describing 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.
caesura Commas, 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 The continuation of an idea or description without pause, punctuation or break, from one line of poetry to the next
Read the textFutility
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 nowThe 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
sidesFull-nerved,- still warm,- too hard
to stir?Was it for this the clay grew tall?- O what made fatuous sunbeams
toilTo break earth's sleep at all?
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 nowThe 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 sidesFull-nerved,- still warm,- too hard to
stir?Was it for this the clay grew tall?- O what made fatuous sunbeams toilTo break earth's sleep at all?
By Wilfred Owen
2. Copy the poem.
3. Find an example of each
of these 10 languagefeatures and label:
a. imperativeb. personificationc. repetitiond. rhymee. rhetorical
questionf. metaphorg. parallel
constructionh. antithesisi. caesuraj. enjambement
imperative
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 nowThe 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
sidesFull-nerved,- still warm,- too hard
to stir?Was it for this the clay grew tall?- O what made fatuous sunbeams
toilTo break earth's sleep at all?
4. It is a sonnet.
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 nowThe 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
sidesFull-nerved,- still warm,- too hard
to stir?Was it for this the clay grew tall?- O what made fatuous sunbeams
toilTo break earth's sleep at all?
rhetorical questions.
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.