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Star-Venus Holmes

22 May 2018

Dr. Wilson

English 123

Final Draft – Essay #4

Death is inevitable

Most of us fear death and it will happen to all of us, even if we would accept it or not.

Instead of dreading death we should embrace it because no one lives forever and it’s better to

be ready and prepared than not at all. A poet by the name W.H Auden creates a phenomenal

sonnet titled [Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,] with a speaker who is unknown to be

either male or female, who has lost a close person by death. Everybody handles death

differently, however, in this poem, the speaker is taking this person’s death quite hard. Death is

indeed a painful activity to feel or activity, but it also cannot be dodged. While death takes a

prolonged toll on the one who’s dying, death allows us to feel many different emotions that are

common and the strategy to surviving grief is to accept it and not push it away.

For one thing, losing someone from death can cause pain to a person who would want

to temporarily wants isolation from the world. In the first stanza, line one and two of the poem,

“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,”

the speaker expresses some anger to the world wanting it to be quiet because of something

that they are going through. Greif can be lonely and isolation, yet this is exactly what the

speaker wants. Since the first line has ten syllables and the second line has twelve, the poem is

in iambic pentameter. The poem starts with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed
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syllable and the end of the sentences have rhyme. Line three and four of the first stanza,

“Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come,” the

speaker also has orders to the world of being quiet. It’s clear that the speaker wants to be alone

at this time of grief happening, and most likely is isolating themselves because of all the

emotion they are going through. The fourth line mentions bringing out the coffin and now we

understand why the speaker is dealing with sadness. Again, there is rhyme at the end of the

stanza, making the first stanza AABB scheme. The speaker is using a lot of hyperboles like

making the world dead silent with no phone ringing and no dogs barking. The speaker is in a lot

of pain and he wants the world to recognize the heartache he is going through.

No doubt death is something that cannot be stopped, just like mother nature cannot be

shut down to be completely quiet, it’s impossible! Unless, we all become extinct sometime very

soon. In stanza two line five and six, “Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead / Scribbling on

the sky the message He Is Dead,” shows how the speaker wants the whole earth to know that

they no longer have this person who has died alive, anymore. The speaker wants the policeman

and airplanes to publicly announce that their lover is gone. No one can prepare for such a

tragedy, however, it’s not the end of the word because death is normal and unavoidable.

Even though death is an unpleasant experience, one must not dwell on a lost one

because they are always with you in spirit. Stanza three line nine and ten, “He was my North,

my South, my East, and West, / My working week and my Sunday’s rest,” explains the speaker

and the person who passes away was both partners as lovers, at least from the speaker’s point

of view. As we look at both lines again they’re in a rhyming scheme as AABB. The speaker’s love
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for this person was so strong that the thought of death never came to mind as to how this is the

way the relationship would end.

In the last stanza, specifically line fifteen and sixteen, “Pour away the ocean and sweep

up the wood; / For nothing now can ever come to any good,” the speaker rejects anything

mother nature has to offer demonstrating his feelings of emptiness. The speaker wants you to

comprehend the void that is growing through their world because they want nothing to do with

anything else but silence. According to Literary History: Objective and subjective: The Poetics of

Auden’s Anthologies, Edward Mendelson states,

“When Auden compiled these two anthologies, he was driven, I think, by the

same impulse that drives all writers at all times, the impulse to say to the reader:

"All those other writers in the past have misled or deceived you with a false or

distorted version of the truth—the truth about life or language or politics or

fiction or anything else—while everything that I tell you is the truth itself”’ (134).

Auden gives you this feeling within the poem that death is human nature and when you lose

someone close to you, you will feel like the world will never be the same again. He illustrates

you will have anger, grief, regret, and the lose the meaning of living for a short time, but you

will eventually feel better after growing through all these emotions. Death is a part of us, just

like breathing, we can’t do without it in this lifetime.

In any case, we feel as nothing good comes from death, however, it often takes anguish

and lost to remind us how valuable life really is. The speaker asks for quiet right in the

beginning of the sonnet because they need the time to mourn the death of their beloved. The

speaker expresses that they want “He is Dead” written in the sky to let everyone know that this
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death has occurred, so let’s pay a moment of silence to acknowledge this. The speaker

expresses total emptiness and it’s as if the speaker died with their lover since he wants nothing

to do with anyone or anything. The poet concentrated on the feelings of intensity of how it

feels to lose someone who meant the whole world to you. Auden beautifully uses nature as a

symbolic form for death, usually nature has a positive outlook but he decides to use it

oppositely and express not everything has a happy ending.

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Work Cited

Auden, W H. “[Stop All the Clocks, Cut of the Telephone].” The Norton Introduction To

Literature, by Kelly J. Mays, 12th ed., W.W. Norton, 2017, pp. 802–803.

Mendelson, Edward. "Literary History: Objective and Subjective: The Poetics of Auden's

Anthologies." Romanic Review, vol. 100, no. 1/2, Jan-Mar2009, pp. 129-135. EBSCOhost, 0-

search.ebscohost.com.library.4cd.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=55547061&site=ed

s-live.
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