Both poets portray a sense of hopelessness in war, although Futility destroys this hope while The Yellow Palm somewhat develops it. In Futility, the sun is personified as ‘kind’and óld’, both familiar and domestic adjecives that highlight nature as caring of human consciousness – a particularly humanist view. This hope becomes crushed in the devastating final line where the voice questions why the ‘fatuous sunbeams toil’. Developing this increasingly disconsolate tone is part of Owen’s desire to portray war as hopeless and against nature, a reading against those who would have been patriotic for war and nationalism. In contrast The Yellow Palm shows a strange sense of hope in the ‘Beggar Child…blessing [a] cruise missile ’with a peculiar ‘smile’. That this Western word ‘bless[ing]’is used by the voice makes it apparent that the poet is ascribing his Western perspective onto a Middle East being, perhaps through colonial guilt. That this ‘smilé’comes from an innocent and helpless çhild’further demonstrates how mankind can be responsible for overcoming acts of violence – a stark difference from the lack of hope in Futility. Therefore, while the hopelessness of Futility devastates the reader, there is a sense of possibility in changing perceptions of the effects of war in TYP, however ambiguous that might be.
