Wilfred Owen’s poem “Futility” compares humanity and nature and their respective roles on the earth. The poem discusses the meaning of life for both nature and man using “the king old sun” representing nature and “him” representing man, more specifically, a soldier.
Human kind’s role on the earth is unknown according to the poem when it states, “- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil/ To break earth’s sleep at all?” This line, in translation, asks the question, “why does the sun rise to wake the earth?” Essentially, the line is asking why God has mankind alive in the first place.
The king old sun’s role on the Earth is to provide for the rest of life. The poem reveals nature’s role in the beginning of the second stanza, “Think how it wakes the seeds…” The sun’s role is to wake the rest of the earth. The sun brings life trough its light and heat to give to nature.
In the beginning of the poem, nature interacts with human kind: “Move him into the sun -/ Gently its touch awoke him once…” Nature does its job to bring life to the earth, awakening him. God created the sun for just this reason.
God put humankind on the earth to contribute to nature as well, but at one point, the human race broke off from nature. There is now a distinct separation between nature and man. To the narrator, human kind does not have a roll on the earth. Because humans have broken away from nature, humans no longer have a roll to contribute to nature. Selfishly, humans only contribute to themselves. Examples of these contributions are war, science, even philosophy.
Literature of War STC 