Making Specific Reference to Language, Imagery, and Verse Form, Discuss Owen's Attitudes Towards Death and Dying in ‘futility'and the ‘last Laugh'.

English Literature – Poetry

Making specific reference to language, imagery, and verse form, discuss Owen's attitudes towards death and dying in ‘Futility' and the ‘Last Laugh'.

In Owen's poem ‘The Last Laugh' each stanza contains a description of a soldier's death in war, and then the weapons reaction to it. This creates the image of the soldiers merely being entertainment to the weapons. The descriptions of the soldier's deaths occupy two lines per stanza, and then the remaining three lines are used to reveal the weapons reaction to the deaths. The personification of the guns humanizes and also goes to dehumanize the soldiers. Owen uses verbs such as ‘sighed', ‘guffawed', and ‘chuckled' to personify the guns. This also creates an aural sense to the poem in which the human features linked to the weapons by Owen, is in keeping with their size. The onomatopoeia employed, ‘Tut-tut! Tut-tut!', also is in keeping with the volume and pitch of sound that the weapons would produce. This use of personification of the guns is what goes to dehumanize the soldiers and demean the significance of their deaths. The fact that a human life is as meaningless in war as to merely entertain the guns goes to show how Owen sees the men's deaths as pointless and life as fleeting. This shows how Owen is almost questioning the purpose of the war through his poetry which he directly reveals in his poem ‘Futility'. In the second stanza of this poem Owen questions his entire existence, he says ‘O what made factuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?' This shows the reader how Owen feels about war and even life. At this point of the war Owen feels so pessimistic about his existence and the purpose of the war, he begins to question the most fundamental aspects of life. This shows the reader how derogatory and pointless war and dying in the process of war is. This is similarly linked to how pointless he voices it is in ‘The Last Laugh', when men are dying merely to entertain the guns.

In his poem ‘Futility' Owen expresses his view that death is inescapable and irreversible in war. Throughout the poem there are many references to waking, Owen speaks of how the suns touch ‘woke him once', how ‘always it woke him', roused him. He also speaks of how the sun ‘woke once the clays of a cold star', whilst referring to the beginning of life on Earth. This repetition of how the sun has ‘always' woken the dead soldier is representative of the pattern of his life and how this cycle has been broken. Owen uses the repetitious cycles of both the soldiers continual sleeping and waking by the sun as an extended metaphor for his optimism and energy. The breaking of this cycle shows Owens view that death is inevitable both in war and merely life. It can also be argued that this is shown by Owens exasperation and almost anger towards the sun and even life when he begins to ask rhetorical questions of what can be interpreted due to Owens religious back-ground as God; which in this poem is represented by the ‘kind old sun.' The personification of the sun emphisises the nurturing and loving aspect of it portraying it as the creator. This idea is backed up as Owen writes how it once ‘woke the clays of a cold star.' This goes to highlight the power of the sun furthering the notion of its representation as the creator of life or God. Owen goes to introduce the idea that even the most prevalent vast power imaginable cannot wake this ‘full nerved' ‘still warm' body. This lack of action by the greatest power he can imagine, the power ‘that woke a cold star' is what causes Owen to question the wars consequence and even causes him to reassess the power of war and the sun. Because the sun is so powerful yet cannot reverse the death of one ‘still warm' soldier the act of death is seen as irreversible and elemental act, and on reflection the act of trying to wake him even with the greatest ‘kind' power imaginable was ‘futile.'

In his poem ‘The Last Laugh' Owen conveys his view that death in war is not compromising and cannot be reasoned with, but is equitable. Each of the three stanzas of the poem contains a soldier's death. Each of the three soldiers represents something that is killed by war. The first soldier represents faith or religion. The soldier says ‘O Jesus Christ I'm hit,' and promptly dies. Owen then outlines the ambiguity of the phrase used by the soldier and states that it did not matter whether the soldier ‘vainly cursed' or ‘prayed indeed,' as war, the equitable process it is, would not have been merciful either way, and still would have killed