Comparing Poems 'Funeral Blues And Stop All The Clocks'

In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.

Mourning and mortality is a constant concern that transcends time. Slessor’s poetic treatment of these ideas continue to engage readers as it evokes a sense of awareness. This is evident in Kenneth Slessor 's poem Five Bells as the persona 's grief for his deceased friend, Joe Lynch causes him to realise the significance of time and the strength of spiritual attachments. This further leads him to question the purpose of human life.

Similarly, as “Stop all of the Clocks” develops the narrator metaphorically and onomatopoeically highlights that everything in life must acknowledge the death and experience it with him. Outward signs of cotton gloves and bows with doves is a metaphor for the person’s acknowledgement of death. The importance of the deceased love extends to every facet of the narrator’s life because they belonged in every moment that the narrator lived. In this moment of grief, the narrator feels betrayed because they invested in a love which was not eternal.

In W.H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues” (pg. 762), the poem takes place a short time after the speaker’s beloved has died and how the speaker feels that his life has been forever changed and that he will never recover. In Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” (pg. 767), the poem takes place a short time after the speaker’s beloved has passed away and how she feels that she can master the feeling of losing someone the she loves. However, she seems to be in denial over her true feelings. Between the two poem’s, Auden’s “Funeral Blues” seems to do a better job than  Bishop’s “One Art”, in using rhyme, alliteration, and structure to show the reader the feelings and emotional state of the speaker after their beloved has died.

Both Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Dirge Without Music” and Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” are poems that discuss the emotional repercussions of death and dying. Grieving the loss of a loved one can be an extremely excruciating experience. At times one may feel suffocated by the sorrow and are desperate for a way to find relief from these intense emotions that are apparent in the grieving process. This is where works of literature can be therapeutic when dealing with difficult emotions. Poetry can be extremely helpful in this sense as one of its purposes is to emphasize certain feelings, ones that we feel but are not sure how to process. It can bring to life what we wish we could do or say, but are not able to. By cross-referencing

Though in stark contrast to the first stanza in form, the two-part second stanza continues with this disconnect of death from the subject in the poem. Each part begins with an emotionally-charged direct address to a male subject using expletive language. The speaking voice is conceivably appealing to both the functional presence of the dead man and every other man who fits into the category of the “executive type.” This stanza uses a type of call-and-response form as a rhetorical commentary on the nature of chance, a continuation of the stock market theme from

In the chapter “naught and grief,” music appears to provide a measure of harmony if not logic in a world of insensible changes. Teague and the Home Guard are moved by Stobrod and Pangle’s performance, although they shoot the musicians nonetheless. This brutal act is committed out of fear and a lack of understanding, and it foreshadows Inman’s eventual death.

When examining the narrator’s character, knowing the setting of the poem, and the exact meaning of all of the lines, it becomes clear that the narrator is not living at all. The constant use of the word “you” in the poem can separate the narrator and the reader. This separation is emphasized in the last lines of the poem, “Nor honour. It is easy to be dead. Say only this, ‘They are dead.’

“Stop All The Clocks” by W. H. Auden expresses a dramatic, immediate response to the death of his partner. Thomas Hardy writes “The Voice” to profess the remorse he feels, after his wife dies while their relationship was on bad terms and estranged. Both Poems are written in four stanzas of four lines. Each stanza in “The Voice” highlights the different stages of grief. The first stanza introduces how he believes his estranged wife speaks to him “how you call to me.” He then continues to have flashbacks and remember her “Even to the original air-blue gown!” In the third stanza he questions whether it truly was her calling

The speaker and the others are starting to anticipate the woman’s death in the second stanza. The speaker was awestruck of this occurrence as it is shown that the speaker was new to this experience. The woman’s death has become the center of the speaker’s life and it is becoming more real to the speaker as the woman is slowly dying.

In Emily Dickinson's poems “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died” and “Because I could not stop for Death” both have to do with death. Sadly those are the only similarities in the two poems. Although the two poems were written less than a year apart they both have a different perspective of death in both of them. “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died” talks about death at the moment and “Because I could not stop for Death” has to do with after death.

Next, "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain" creates an illusion of a mind becoming unstable by describing the speaker's irrationality. The speaker's irrationality is represented in the third stanza and fourth stanza. It is evident that the speaker is beginning to hear voices, which is why she states "And then I heard them lift a Box" (line 9). The voices that the speaker is hearing are beginning to take over her mind as she expresses "And creak across my Soul," which gives the reader's the illusion of the speaker losing all control. All the problems that the speaker is experiencing as a result of her mental stability are beginning to take their toll, which is evident through the statement "Boots of Lead, again, Then Space - began to toll" (line 11-12). The speaker has now fallen into a state of irrationality, and her mind has suffered enough, and consequently thoughts of suicide plague the speaker. The statement "As all the Heavens were a Bell" represents the speaker's feelings that her mind has a chance of being at peace again if she ends her existing insanity, and she must therefore act upon her suicide thoughts (line 13). The speaker is trying to convince herself to follow through with her thoughts of suicide, as clearly indicated in her statement "Wrecked, solitary, here-." The speaker

In “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” by W.H. Auden the author uses different literary devices to portray the theme of overwhelming grief and loss. In the poem, the speaker is someone who has recently lost a loved one. The person is so distraught that they start issuing harsh demands. The speaker wants everything to stop and all noise to seize. He or she then starts revealing more personal details by telling how much the loved one meant to them. This poem is dramatic and successfully uses literary devices to show how the speaker is feeling in their time of grief. W.H. Auden uses metaphors, personification, and overstatements to reveal the effects of overwhelming grief.

In the first one, for instance, he calls to stop the most everyday objects: the telephone, the clocks, even a dog “cut off the telephone / prevent the dog grom barking with a juicy bone”. In this stanza appears the scenario of a funeral, which leads us to see that death is more recurrent than we think, an object of everyday life, what he is going through “and with a muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come”.

Mourning over the death of a loved one can be a difficult situation for a person and can result in conflicting feelings. In Stop All the Clocks by W.H. Auden, the many contradictions can be explained by the contradictory nature of a person in mourning. The narrator, mourning over the death of a loved one, is torn between wanting life to move on after mourning and wanting everything to cease to exist rather than feel the pain of loss.