Wilfred Owen’s poem, Futility, is a poem about war, in which he questions whether war is right or not. War in the early 1900s was seen as a way to have glory and honour, however, Owen states all that happens in war is death and it is futile.

In the poem, there are two stanzas which contrast each other a lot. The first stanza personifies the sun to be a creator of life, as if it is a god. A soldier is lying on the floor, presumably dead, and Owen is speaking from the point of view of another soldier who hs found this dead soldier.  Owen ends the first stanza saying that if there was a way for the dead soldier to rouse, then the benevolent sun would know.

The way the second stanza contrasts the first is, he attacks the sun fr not being able to wake up the dead soldier. In the first two lines, he says that the sun gave life to the whole of Earth, and towards the last few lines, Owen says, how hard can it be to just give life to this dead soldier. By the end of the poem, his last point is that the sun shouldn’t of given life at all if all life was just going to result in death.

This poem is a anti-war protest poem and also it is a pro atheist poem as well. It is a pro atheist poem because the way that he describes the sun, is similar to the features of the Almighty God. In this poem he clearly questions the powers of the sun or God, therefore he is questioning if God is actually benevolent or omnipotent. This leads to thinking if He does actually exist. People reading this poem at the time, especially people in Britain, would be Christians who worship God, and they’ll find that this could change their mind, both about their faith and their opinion on war.