Stop All the Clocks Essay Example
Stop All the Clocks Essay Example

Stop All the Clocks Essay Example

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Read the poem “Stop all the Clocks” attached to this pack carefully and write a criticism in essay form. In general, the poem “Stop all the Clocks” written by W. H. Auden is about death of a dear person.

When analyzing this poem in details, we see that the subject matter of first stanza is concerned with shutting out every sound apart from drums, which will accompany the entering coffin. As for the second stanza, the subject matter deals with the fact that every single thing such as airplanes, doves and policemen should express sadness and sorrow.The subject matter of third stanza is concerned with showing the reader importance of dead person to the poet. Together with that we see that no matter how strong love is, death has the power to destroy anything, no matter h

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ow strong or powerful an emotion might be. Finally, in the forth stanza we learn how poet lost interest in the beauty of nature, such as stars, sun, moon, and oceans. This is so because the dead person took with him the poet’s ability to enjoy and to appreciate the beauty provided by nature.

After analyzing the subject matter of the poem it is easy for us to see its themes, which would be death, sadness, sorrow, love, darkness, desperation, loneliness and power of death upon love. So far we have learned that this poem is full of negativity. As a result we may say that poet uses negative diction. In the first stanza we see list of verbs such as “stop”, “prevent”, “silence”. Yet all these verbs indicate an end of something representing the end of one’s life togethe

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with their love.

We do encounter verbs such as “bring out” and “let…come” which would normally indicate beginning of something new. Yet in this poem these verbs have a negative meaning since the nouns attached to them are “coffin” and “mourners”. As for another aspect of diction, poet uses sensuous diction referring to the sense of hearing. Once again we see negativity of the poem since in this poem the poet shuts out every single sound apart from drums, showing his sorrow. In the second stanza the poet once again uses a list of verbs.This time the verbs are used to imply sad emotion on every single thing emphasizing on tragedy.

As for imagery, in this stanza we find personification: “Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead” The personification of aeroplane is used by the poet to once again emphasize the tragedy by making everyone around feel the same as poet. As for the diction in the third stanza we find excessive repetition of word “my”. This shows the reader how strong was the relationship between the poet and the dead person.In addition to that we find a metaphor which is extended over first three verses of the third stanza: “He was my North, my South, me East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My moon, my midnight, my talk, my song;” This extended metaphor is used to show how much the dead person meant to the poet, since his whole world turned around him. In the last verse of third stanza we encounter a sudden stop: “I thought the love would last forever: I was

wrong.

” This sudden break might represent sudden crush of dreams and hopes that poet once had.In addition to that this break might represent harsh end of their love. As for the diction in the fourth stanza we find reference to light in words such as ‘stars’, ‘moon’, ‘sun’. Yet these do not fill the poem with happiness as they usually would because the verbs attached to these words: ‘now wanted’, ‘pack up’, and ‘dismantle’ indicate that light is being replaced by darkness. In addition to that we find a hyperbole: “Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood” This hyperbole indicates poets strong will to destroy all the beauty provided by nature.

This is so because with the death of loved person, the poet is not able to appreciate anything. Yet it is not just that, the poet does not want to appreciate the beauty, at least not alone. As a whole even though this poem concerns with death and therefore it is full of negativity, poet brought out the tragedy together with his emotion in a very artistic way. The diction used together with imagery allowed reader to sorrow and mourn together with poet as if all this was for real.

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