Compare and contrast how ‘Futility’ and ‘Out of the Blue’ deal with the issue of death.
In ‘Out of the Blue’ and ‘Futility’, we see the ways that the poets portray their feelings about death. In Simon Armitage’s ‘Out of the Blue’ the death has not occurred yet however it shows how the poet portrays feelings of oncoming death. In ‘Futility’ the poet shows the futile nature of war in the useless loss of life as a young soldier loses his life.
Owen uses imagery to evoke an emotive response from the reader. The poet uses natural imagery to remind the reader of the pointlessness of life. The sun, a powerful and evocative image of life, has no power in the revival of the young soldier in the poem. This image is contrasted with the image of the soldier being in the ‘snow’ which is often equated with death as it is cold and pale. This is effective because it shows that due to the effects of war, even a powerful archetype such as the sun, worshipped in many cultures for having powers, has no use as a young life is wasted and left to lie in the snow. The image of ‘fields half sown’ is also used to evoke an emotive response as it implies that the war had taken half of the population with it, devastating ‘home’, a place most think of as being untouchable and a haven. This quote also relates to the dead soldier being young as half sown could refer to the fighting youth’s lives being cut short.
In contrast, in ‘Out of the Blue’, the death has not happened yet. The poem is told from the perspective of a man contemplating suicide as he stands at a window of the World Trade Centre during the 9/11 attacks. Armitage writes about the speaker’s ‘white cotton shirt is twirling, turning’, as he looks out of his window. We understand that the speaker is referring to the fact that he is ‘waving’ his shirt as he desperate to attract attention – he wants to be saved. But in the middle of