WRITING FORMS QUIZ: Introduction Copy

Read the following text; which form of writing is it?

No work of literature has done more to shape the way humans imagine science and its moral consequences than Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley’s revolutionary and remarkably enduring tale of creation and responsibility. In writing Frankenstein, Mary rejects a simplistic portrayal of the nameless creature engendered by Victor’s pride-addled brain, in favour of a provocative complexity in its characterisation. Shelley produces both in the creature and in its creator, tropes that continue to resonate deeply with contemporary audiences because it forces us to consider who we label as the monster.

Shelley employs and manipulates the conventional Gothic technique of the man/monster binary opposition in this chapter 24 extract to create a sense of ambiguity about the creature’s character. It would be very easy to consign it to the category of ‘scary’ monster, as Frankenstein seems to do, but to do this ignores the fact that he demonstrates himself to be capable of the same kind of independent creative thought and emotions as humans. For example, the extract begins with a short simple sentence: ‘‘But it is true that I am a wretch’ - the simple structure of this sentence stresses the nameless creature’s honesty and sincerity which Shelley emphasises further when the monster admits to a plethora of violent crimes: ‘I have murdered… I have strangled… I have devoted my creator… to misery…’ Shelley’s use of anaphora in repeating ‘I have…’ magnifies his brutal honesty and elicits a mixture of emotions from the reader, including disgust at his actions, but also sympathy because of his complete openness. Indeed, it could be argued that because of such qualities, he sometimes shows himself to be more of a 'man' than mankind itself, that is characterised in the novel as a bloodthirsty pack of hounds hungering for the unjust execution of Justine and expelling the creature.

Additionally, when he says, ‘You hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself’, he reminds the reader that he is capable of deep, insightful thought and shows genuine remorse for his actions. Unlike Frankenstein, the Monster changes over the course of the novel as he comes to see the error of his ways and express remorse for his actions. His line, ‘you hate me’ also takes us back to the traumas he had experienced at the hands of the humans that had culminated in this tragic point of the plot. Additionally, the humanity in his eloquent language is reminiscent of the fact that despite the crimes he had committed, he did not come into the world with evil and violent tendencies. For example, when he is created, he smiles at Victor; he even tells us in his own chapters that he was benevolent, kind and full of love for his "father" and “admired virtue, good feelings, and loved the gentle manners” of his ‘cottagers’.  However, when Victor abandons his creation, he carelessly throws the creature to the destiny that fate holds for him in a harsh world of judgemental humans. The nameless monster decries the fact that ‘no father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses’, so he goes on a quest for, acceptance, love, connection and human contact, which drives the plot, as other characters react to his attempts to forge relationships.  Nevertheless, because he is abnormally tall, ugly, and strong, people predetermine that he is something to be feared and struck down. Abandoned by his creator, attacked by the De Laceys, who had provided the creature with a taste of love, and falsely accused of murder after his attempted rescue of the little girl, the monster ultimately lives a life of tragic rejection and isolation. Seen in terms of these qualities, the creature draws sympathy from the reader because he is more akin to an abandoned child than a heartless villain.

Consequently, through these tragic events, Shelley suggests that, ironically, it is the monstrous treatment he receives from humans, that drives him to kill, thus forcing us to ask hard questions about whether mankind is the real monster in this novel. This also appears to reflect the novel’s inspiration by the writings of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who believed that humans in their natural state are good and that it is society that corrupts them. Like Rousseau’s character Emile, the creature learns from his environment and only slowly is introduced to society. Symbolically, the treatment of the monster by Victor Frankenstein and the other humans also raises the unanswered question as to whether governments and laws can maintain order or are part of the social ill.

In conclusion, Mary Shelley’s landmark fusion of science, ethics, and literary expression does not necessarily appear designed to scare her readers into believing that all science is evil or monstrous; however, she does appear to encourage us to consider the repercussions of scientific and technological advancement. Although Frankenstein is infused with the exhilaration of seemingly unbounded human creativity, the novel also prompts serious reflection about our individual and collective responsibility for nurturing the products of our creativity and whether or not we should impose constraints on our capacities to change the world around us. This is reflected when Mary cautions against Victor’s myopic perspective that creation—bringing into existence— is all that matters; here, Shelley appears to suggest that just because we can create, doesn’t mean we should. Appropriately, Shelley’s choice of the Gothic mode for Frankenstein helps explore Victorian fears that scientific hubris would tempt people to play God (and, perhaps, try to replace God) through the growing power of unconstrained scientific creation - a fear which lives on in more modern literary forms such as in William Golding’s nuclear war dystopian novel ‘Lord of the Flies’ and the apocalyptic future war nightmare of the killer machines in the Terminator movies. Thus, engaging with Frankenstein allows a broad public - and especially future scientists and engineers - to consider the history of our scientific progress together with our expanding abilities in the future, to reflect on evolving understandings of the responsibilities such abilities entail, as well as to question how much restraint and responsibility we should bear for the creations we bring into this world; Shelley’s novel calls us to be accountable for what we create and what might be destroyed in the process of creating.

Read the following text; which form of writing is it?

The author’s use of three long complex sentences can be seen as an aggressive literary approach intended to reflect, in essence, the aggressive nature of the storm. Taking a closer look, we can see how the length of the sentences helps to convey the enduring feeling of struggle and difficulties the characters face against power of nature. They also help to slow down the pace of the novel, illustrating how the coach had become embroiled in a long, slow battle against the natural world. Finally, the complexity of the sentences provides a link to the way in which their journey had become ever more complicated as a result of the difficulties posed by the destructive forces of nature.

The author also makes effective use of personification, illustrating the external conflict of how the ‘wind came in gusts’, as if the travelers are being ambushed by a tactical force; the noun ‘gusts’ also helps to convey a strong sense of power which is reinforced by another dose of personification with ‘the wind.. at times shaking the coach’; here, Du Maurier appears to be trying to add a sense of terror to the extract; she gives the wind a mind of its own, emphasizing how uncontrollable and unpredictable it is, as it begins to build up power and effect, rendering the travelers more and more helpless.

Read the following text; which form of writing is it?

In source A, there are many different, quite random, and strange things that happen, whereas in source B, there is just one, although it does happen twice.

The strange things in source A include ‘ghostly’ piano music in the middle of the night’ and ‘four reports from motorists claiming to have seen ‘a ghost at a particular spot’. However, there were perfectly rational explanations for both of these incidents because the ‘music’ was caused by mice chewing on the piano and the other ‘ghost’ was ‘simply a woman’s dress left out on a clothesline'. This tells us the strange things in source A were not supernatural at all; however, in source B, it suggests that they are. Mrs. D--- sees ‘a spirit rise’ twice in her life, once when she was just 16 and a seven-year-old boy had died. She says that she ‘saw the form of a little child’ floating above the ground. Then, twenty years later, she saw something ‘flutter’ in front of a fire when another child had died, suggesting they was also a spirit rising from the dead, and that Mrs. D--- must have some sort of psychic power.

However, the strange things in source A are witnessed by a range of different people but it’s only Mrs D---- who sees them in source B. This casts doubts on Mrs D---‘s accounts because she was the only witness; therefore, there is no one to back her claims. Additionally, the first spirit she saw was ‘fair and fresh-looking, and perfectly healthy’, which is ironic because, in reality, he was a ‘sick child’, so it is possible that she was just projecting what she wanted to see and there was nothing supernatural either, just like in source A.

Read the following text; which form of writing is it?

To Susan Owen

4 January 1917

Address. 2nd Manchester Regt. B.E.F.

My own dear Mother,

I have joined the Regiment, who are just at the end of six weeks' rest.

I will not describe the awful vicissitudes of the journey here. I arrived at Folkestone, and put up at the best hotel. It was a place of luxury — inconceivable now — carpets as deep as the mud here — golden flunkeys; pages who must have been melted into their clothes, and expanded since; even the porters had clean hands. Even the dogs that licked up the crumbs had clean teeth.

Since I set foot on Calais quays I have not had dry feet.

No one knew anything about us on this side, and we might have taken weeks to get here, and must have, but for fighting our way here.

I spent something like a pound in getting my baggage carried from trains to trains.

At the Base, as I said, it was not so bad. We were in the camp of Sir Percy Cunynghame, who had bagged for his Mess the Luke of Connaught's chef.

After those two days, we were let down, gently, into the real thing, Mud.

It has penetrated now into that Sanctuary my sleeping bag, and that holy of holies my pyjamas. For I sleep on a stone floor and the servant squashed mud on all my belongings; I suppose by way of baptism. We are 3 officers in this 'Room', the rest of the house is occupied by servants and the band; the roughest set of knaves I have ever been herded with. Even now their vile language is shaking the flimsy door between the rooms.

I chose a servant for myself yesterday, not for his profile, nor yet his clean hands, but for his excellence in bayonet work. For the servant is always at the side of his officers in the charge and is therefore worth a dozen nurses. Alas, he of the Bayonet is in the Bombing Section and it is against Regulations to employ such as a servant. I makeshift with another.

Everything is makeshift. The English seem to have fallen into the French unhappy-go-lucky non-system. There are scarcely any houses here. The men lie in Barns.

Our Mess Room is also an Ante and Orderly Room. We eat & drink out of old tins, some of which show traces of ancient enamel. We are never dry, and never 'off duty'.

On all the officers' faces there is a harassed look that I have never seen before, and which in England, never will be seen — out of jails. The men are just as Bairnsfather has them — expressionless lumps. We feel the weight of them hanging on us. I have found not a few of the old Fleetwood Musketry party here. They seemed glad to see me, as far as the set doggedness of their features would admit.

I censored hundreds of letters yesterday, and the hope of peace was in every one. The Daily Mail map which appeared about Jan. 2 will be of extreme interest to you.

We were stranded in a certain town one night and I saved the party of us by collaring an Orderly in the streets and making him take us to a Sergeants Mess. We were famishing, and a mug of beer did me more good than any meal I ever munched. The place was like a bit of Blighty, all hung with English Greetings and Mistletoe.

As I could I collected accoutrement, some here, some there, and almost am complete; Steel Helmets, & Gas; improved Box Respirator, and cetera.

The badge of the Regt. is some red tabs on the shoulder thus . I scarcely know any of the officers. The senior are old regulars. The younger are, several, Artists! In my room is an Artist of the same school as I passed. He is also a fine water-colour sketcher. I may have time to write again tomorrow. I have not of course had anything from you.

I am perfectly well and strong, but unthinkably dirty and squalid.
I scarcely dare to wash.
Pass on as much of this happy news as may interest people.
The favourite song of the men is

'The Roses round the door
Makes me love Mother more.'

They sing this everlastingly.
I don't disagree.

Your very own W.E.O. x

Read the following text; which form of writing is it?

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.

The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.

Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other’s yarns—and even convictions. The Lawyer—the best of old fellows—had, because of his many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol. The director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his way aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht. For some reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and fit for nothing but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.

And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.

...

“‘His last word—to live with,’ she insisted. ‘Don’t you understand I loved him—I loved him—I loved him!’

“I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.

“‘The last word he pronounced was—your name.’

“I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood still, stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. ‘I knew it—I was sure!’... She knew. She was sure. I heard her weeping; she had hidden her face in her hands. It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn’t he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark—too dark altogether....”

Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time. “We have lost the first of the ebb,” said the Director suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

Read the following text; which form of writing is it?

"Gregory"

by Barbara Carter

"Gregory is my beautiful gray Persian cat. He walks with pride and grace, performing a dance of disdain as he slowly lifts and lowers each paw with the delicacy of a ballet dancer. His pride, however, does not extend to his appearance, for he spends most of his time indoors watching television and growing fat. He enjoys TV commercials, especially those for Meow Mix and 9 Lives. His familiarity with cat food commercials has led him to reject generic brands of cat food in favor of only the most expensive brands. Gregory is as finicky about visitors as he is about what he eats, befriending some and repelling others. He may snuggle up against your ankle, begging to be petted, or he may imitate a skunk and stain your favorite trousers. Gregory does not do this to establish his territory, as many cat experts think, but to humiliate me because he is jealous of my friends. After my guests have fled, I look at the old fleabag snoozing and smiling to himself in front of the television set, and I have to forgive him for his obnoxious, but endearing, habits."

Read the following text; which form of writing is it?

The Village that Lost its Children 

Few people had ever heard of Aberfan until disaster struck it. It was just another of the small mining villages lying tucked away in the South Wales valleys – a huddle of anonymous terraced houses of uniform ugliness unrelieved except for chapel and pub.

Its heart was the coal-pit, and its environment like the others – the debris of a slowly exhausting industry: a disused canal, some decaying railtracks, a river black as the Styx1 , a general coating of grime over roofs and gardens, and the hills above blistered with a century of mining waste.

Such villages learned to accept a twilight world where most of the menfolk worked down the pits. Many died early, with their lungs full of coal-dust, and the life was traditionally grim and perilous. Disaster, in fact, was about the only news that ever came out of the valleys – the sudden explosion underground, miners entombed alive, or the silent death in the dark from gas. Wales and the world were long hardened to such news. But not to what happened in Aberfan.

A coal-mine sends to the surface more waste than coal, and a mining village has to learn to live with it. It must be put somewhere or the mine would close, and it’s too expensive to carry it far. So the tips grow everywhere, straddling the hillsides, nudging the houses like blackfurred beasts. Almost everyone, from time to time, has seen danger in them, but mostly they are endured as a fact of life.

On the mountain above Aberfan there were seven such tips. The evening sun sank early behind them. To some of the younger generation they had always been there, as though dumped by the hand of God. They could be seen from the school windows, immediately below them, rising like black pyramids in the western sky. But they were not as solid as they looked; it was known that several had moved in the past, inching ominously down the mountain.

What was not known however was that the newest tip, number 7, was a killer with a rotten heart. It had been begun in Easter 1958, and was built on a mountain spring, most treacherous of all foundations. Gradually, over the years, the fatal seeping of water was turning Tip 7 into a mountain of moving muck.

Then one morning, out of the mist, the unthinkable happened, and the tip came down on the village. The children of Pantglas Junior School had just arrived in their classrooms and were right in the path of it. They were the first to be hit by the wave of stupifying filth which instantly smothered more than a hundred of them.

The catastrophe was not only the worst in Wales but an event of such wanton and indifferent cruelty it seemed to put to shame both man and God.

Read the following text; which form of writing is it?

Riots reveal London's Two Disparate Worlds

By Martin Fletcher, NBC News correspondent

LONDON - You really don’t have to look very far for the reasons for London’s rioting, looting and generally thuggish frenzy of violence, located mostly in poorer, peripheral communities. The lives of most rioters are so far removed from those of the country's leaders it’s like they occupy different planets.

Think about this: To cope with the violence, London’s Mayor Boris Johnson interrupted his family vacation in North America.

Prime Minister David Cameron returned from his vacation in a (shared) ten thousand pounds a week villa in Italy where he was reportedly taking tennis lessons with a coach flown out from Britain.

Home Secretary Theresa May cut short her vacation in Switzerland.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg returned from his vacation in France.

I was wondering as I watched, from a safe distance, a mob of young men, running, looting and throwing bottles, when the last time was that one of them had a vacation. Probably never. I thought, this is their vacation. It’s a break from their routine of hanging around street-corners. It’s fun, for them. They were laughing as police chased them.

Don’t get me wrong; they should arrest every last person who broke the law and terrified innocent residents. But is it really surprising that under-educated, jobless youths go on the rampage, faced with the inconceivable gap between the rich and the poor and their sense of utter hopelessness and disenfranchisement?

They feel they deserve a slice of the cake too. Their sense of entitlement is this: We are entitled to steal what we can.

Violence and lawlessness spread across London as the capital's most senior police officer urged the public to clear the streets in affected communities. Property and vehicles have been set on fire in several areas, some burning out of control.

As the young and poor loot, burn and destroy, how about this: It was reported this week that 106 Bond Street, one of London’s most prestigious shopping addresses, was sold for 28.5 million pounds (around $47 million). Cash. To the son of an entrepreneur. Mind-bogglingly, there were 22 other cash buyers bidding for the property.

It was also reported this week that an average-wage earner who wants to buy a London house would have to save his/her entire salary for 31 years.

A jobless youth in Peckham or Hackney may as well live on Mars for all his chances of legally obtaining a flatscreen TV or a laptop computer. So egged on by their buddies, jazzed up by the screaming mob, they’re having a ball. Carpe diem. Seize the moment, and grab what you can.

Anger. Hopelessness. A complete lack of social values. All this is true. But the word on the street does not mention any of the above. The word that spread among youth and children as young as eight is much simpler: Go to the shops, grab what you can, while you can.

But where are the parents? As youngsters aged 8 to 18 and older go home with their stolen booty, what are their parents saying? So far there isn’t one report of goods being returned to their rightful owners.

A final thought. One reporter pointed out that in Clapham where the shopping area had been picked clean, the only shop left unlooted and untouched was the book shop.

Read the following text; which form of writing is it?

The Cult of the Self

by Chris Hedges

When you spend your life as a celebrity, you have no idea who you are. And yet we measure our lives by these celebrities. We seek to be like them. We emulate their look and behavior. We escape the messiness of real life through the fantasy of their stardom. We too long to attract admiring audiences for our grand ongoing life movie. We try to see ourselves moving through our life as a camera would see us, mindful of how we hold ourselves, how we dress, what we say. We have learned ways of speaking and thinking that grossly disfigure the way we relate to the world and those around us.

The fantasy of celebrity culture is not designed simply to entertain. It is designed to drain us emotionally, confuse us about our identity, blame ourselves for our predicament, condition us to chase illusions of impossible fame and happiness, and keep us from fighting back.

There were 12 million cosmetic plastic surgery procedures performed last year in the US. They were performed because in America most human beings, rich and poor, famous and obscure, have been conditioned to view themselves as marketable commodities. They are objects. Like consumer products, they have no intrinsic value. They must look fabulous and live on fabulous sets. They must remain young. They must achieve notoriety and money or the illusion of it to be a success and it does not matter how they get there.

The cult of the self dominates our culture. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths. Superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, and manipulation, and incapacity for remorse or guilt. And this is also the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement mistaken for individualism are the same as democratic equality. It is the celebration of image over substance. We have a right in the cult of the self to get whatever we desire.

But the tantalizing illusions offered by our consumer culture are vanishing as we head towards collapse. The ability of the corporate state to pacify the country by extending credit and providing cheap manufactured goods to the masses is gone. The jobs we are shedding are not coming back. The belief that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the freedom to accumulate vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others has been exposed as a fraud.

Read the following text; which form of writing is it?

Out of habit, Honorin skirted around the pile of stones at the end of the village (the pile where her brother had once fallen down and hurt himself). “No, not that way,” she called to the toddler who always came with her to the rice field to collect the water. “A different way today.”

Then she stopped, wonder filling her eyes. “Oh look. Baby sister, look ...”

A hundred yards away, a pipe with a tap stuck out of the ground. Someone had put flowers around it. Already two other laughing children were carefully filling buckets with cool, fresh, clean water.

Not the yellow water from the faraway field with worms wriggling in it, so horrible tasting every drop had to be boiled – but sweet, clear running water from the newly-dug well. Like the other children, Honorin had been frightened of the people who came to talk about stopping illness. But the grown-ups had gathered and listened, and nodded.

Making a well was an enormous task. The villagers gathered sand and stones, while the people helped dig the well.

She took her turn filling the bucket and held the toddler’s hand to walk back. She’d be in plenty of time to have breakfast and go to school, not late and tired like she used to be. Honorin thought she’d like to be a teacher herself when she grew up, and explain to other children how important it is to keep clean and wash your hands before eating.

Before the people left she’d summoned up the courage to ask why they came to her village. They’d told her that someone on the other side of the world had given some money so children like her needn’t die from drinking dirty water. She thought that was nice.

If you’d like to be that person, please complete the direct debit form.

Honorin isn’t one girl. She’s many. Last year WaterAid helped over one million people around the world to gain access to clean water.

Call now on 0300 123 4240 or fill in the form.

Thank you.

Read the following text; which form of writing is it?

In Futility and Come on, Come back, we see the results of wars past and wars future. Futility shows how war affects the living, how it makes them contemplate life, how it makes you question everything, particularly existence. In Come on, Come back, we see how war devastates the mind, how it leaves people longing for peace and salvation, even if they can’t remember what it is they have done or seen.

Owen uses the structure of Futility to convey a single event and the subsequent thoughts it evokes. He uses the simple sonnet form to find the essence of what a death brings to him – the feeling of utter pointlessness. Even though it is much more brief than Come on, Come back, he epitomises the feelings of nihilism and emptiness that death can bring. He uses half-rhyme to create a disjointed, unnatural feel that makes the poem feel strange and creates a strange disjointed harmony. It doesn’t quite sound right. This is superbly appropriate for the subject itself. Even though the dead soldier looks as if he is just sleeping, he isn’t. It isn’t quite right. He also builds on the series of questions he asks in the poem to build up to the most profound of all: “Oh what made fatuous sunbeams toil/to break earth’s sleep at all?” Here we see how he cannot understand why the universe bothered to raise anything, to build a civilisation, when it is all for nothing. We destroy each other.

Although Come on, Come back is a narrative poem, it still uses the structure to build up to a climax, just as Owen did. The line lengths and the way the lines fall, as well as the odd rhymes of ‘stone’ in the first stanza are also disjointed and fragmented. Thus we see how the poet uses rhythm and rhyme (or half-rhyme in Owen’s case) to create a sense of a fragmented, confused, disharmonious world.

The personas in the two poems are also different: Owen’s is a first-person narrative whereas Come on, Come back is third-person narrative. Owen’s use of a persona is helpful: it is insightful. We get to see into his mind and see his thoughts. This helps us empathise with him and gain an insight into his feeling of utter despair and despondency. In Come on, Come back Stevie Smith writes about ‘Vaudevue’, the ‘girl soldier’. Using this persona is interesting and thought-provoking. A ‘girl soldier’ is something unusual. Women often don’t fight on the front line, as this girl has, mainly because women are seen as not being able to cope with the front line and what they see. We’re instantly thrown into wondering if it’s acceptable for women to see such things, and if it isn’t, is it any better for men to see such things. Not only this, but Smith calls her a ‘girl’ – something more fragile, more innocent than a man. Naming her makes her identifiable. Unlike ‘him’ in Futility, a soldier who could represent anybody, Vaudevue has a name and we see her actions. Both are powerful. One makes us think that the dead soldier could be anybody. It could be our brother, our father, our husband. The other makes it personal. In fact, Owen doesn’t even say that this man is a soldier, or even that he is dead. There are several things we can take from this. One is that he doesn’t even know who the soldier is – which shows us the absolute tragedy of war. This man will not be remembered as an individual. It is not personal. Either we all mourn his death or nobody does, because he is nameless. The other thought is that by keeping the soldier anonymous, Owen is deliberately trying to show that he could be anyone. Both show the effect of war – one by using an anonymous man to show Owen’s own thoughts, therefore the effect on him personally. Smith shows the effect on one individual. Both take one individual and show the consequences of conflict on them – and by seeing one person, we learn about the effects of war on the individual. It becomes more personal.

The effects in both poems seem largely psychological. In Futility, the damage done by conflict is in how it makes Owen question everything: mostly, it makes him question our existence, the whole point of our lives: “was it for this the clay grew tall?” – in this God-forsaken man-made war, he cannot see God, or the point of existence. Science gives him no comfort. Yes, the sun gave conditions on earth the ability to generate life. And that work all seems pointless. It leaves Owen desperate for answers and despondent about life. In Come on, Come back, Vaudevue comes to the same conclusion. She too asks: “Aye me, why am I here?” and although the question is ostensibly about her memory loss, we sense something much deeper. Conflict has left both Vaudevue and Owen with a profound sense of pointlessness.

The war seems to have more of an effect on Vaudevue, however. She doesn’t just stop at questioning her existence. Her next action is to go to a lake. She removes her uniform, ‘lunges’ into the water and lies, ‘weeping’ before letting the ‘waters close over her head’. Here, Smith uses a deep symbolism. We have the symbolism of the water – something that soothes and cleanses. Water purifies. Water is used in many cultures and religions as a way of cleaning yourself. Indeed, in Christianity, water is the symbol of baptism, whereby the holy water washes away sin and leaves you reborn. Yet this water is ‘black’ like her mind. This water does not clean her or wash away her sins. When the ‘enemy soldier’ calls her back and carves out a pipe from the reeds, we get a sense of something more primeval – something pre-Christian, something pagan. This, too, is a Godless world. Without religion, we have no sense of anything after death, so not only do both question their existence, but without the promise of eternal life, life is completely pointless. Vaudevue, even without a memory, is so affected by her ‘black’ mind that she seeks comfort and protection from the water, which envelops her and protects her from the world, just as the lake did with Syrinx when she sought to escape from Pan. She is safe there. War has left her in need of comfort and solace – something she finds only in death. In contrast, in Futility, Owen is left in need of comfort and solace, though this is provoked by death which provides no comfort and solace at all.

Finally, both poets use natural images to show war and the results of it. In Come on, Come back Smith shows that the natural world is left behind once the war passes over. It might be ‘rutted’ but the moonlight, water and meadows remain. Nature is what consoles Vaudevue, giving her sanctuary. We see how, once war has passed, nature is left. It’s almost as if Vaudevue is the last human on earth – apart from the enemy sentinel. Nature softens the wounds that war makes. In Futility, this is different. Nature doesn’t offer consolation or solace or hope or safety; it simply reminds him of the pointlessness of life. The sun, a powerful and evocative image of life, has no power. Unsown fields remind Owen of the wasted potential of the dead soldier’s life. He is reminded that nature is powerless and pointless against war.

In summary, both poets show similar results to war. War destroys the mind, war provokes nihilistic questions about the whole point to life. War reminds us of our pointlessness and the brevity of our lives. Both poems show how war fragments and fractures, its psychological effects. War leaves us questioning life, questioning existence. Whilst nature may be left, this is cold comfort to Owen, although it comforts and protects Vaudevue.