Owen too tells us beautifully in Futility how pointless the war is and emphasises the fact that lives are being lost in the war, how serious yet pointless it is. This is a touching poem, which takes away all the superficial glory of war and presents the harsh bare facts. Futility highlights the unnaturalness of man destroying man, and uses the sun as a metaphor for the implicit suggestion that it is Gods decision to take and make life and not our own. Owen portrays a real sense of desperation that these people are too young to die, as he does in other poems using imagery, metaphor and with a sad reflective tone. He thus moves us by making us aware that the soldier who has died in this poem, has no chance of living his life, no tender moments of touch left, and no opportunity so bring new life into the world. Owen captures how precious human life is so sensitively as he describes the soldiers limbs as so dear achieved he talks about the creation of life and life cycle as Barker does in Regeneration. Through personification the sun is seen as a friend, something like a friend who can whisper into the ears of dead soldiers and help to heal their emotional scars. This poem emotionally moves us, this time not violently but sorrowfully and upsettingly fills us with pity and remembrance for those who died to save us. Owen vividly describes a dead soldier as still warm which touches us with a recency that makes the death seem immediate.
The events described in Owen s poems and Barkers novel are real and passionately conveyed, I think that it is the realism, which shocks and moves us, the thought that these events actually could happen to another human being is a very frightening and moving concept. Barker through her extensive research has managed to capture the mood and the truth of the war and Owen because he was there makes it all seem very close, intimate and personal. Both writers are thus powerful anti-war advocates: As Dr River s contemplates the way Burns has been destroyed as a person by the war he says nothing justifies this , a feeling clearly conveyed by both Barker and Owen.