Eng426 20th century english literature

“Stop All the Clocks, Cut off the Telephone.”

Excerpt:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.(Lines 1-8)
This poem is also known as “Funeral Blues”. The poet persona is in a state of grief as he is mourning the death of close friend. The mood of the poem is that of sadness and grief. From the beginning of the poem we can deduce that the persona is not interested in the normal movement of the day such as the sounds of clocks, telephone, animals or musical instruments. He wants to be alone in the world of his grief; one that he is in as a result of the death of a loved one. He commands that all clocks should be stopped, and they should cut the telephones, the dogs should be stopped from barking and the pianos should be silenced so that he will not be distracted or disturbed from mourning his beloved’s death.
To stop all the clocks and cut the telephones is an impossible task but he wants the entire world to stand still as the sound of the clock will remind him of the futility and brevity of life. He wants the dead to be respected with the muffled drum, with airplanes scribbling the message in the sky for all to see, that a beloved is dead. He would like policemen and public doves, indeed the entire world to mourn this death with him. In the third stanza, the persona shows how important the dead man is to him and how overwhelming his love for him is “he was my north, my south, my east and west”. In line 12, the disappointment and sadness he feels is seen as he “thought love would last forever”. There is a tone of hopelessness and finality in the poem as the persona does not want to see the star again, his world is now without the sun and the moon as he has ordered should be done away with. The poem is full of hyperbolic metaphors like “pour away the sea”, “stop all the clocks”, “pack up the moon”, “dismantle the sun”, to show the depth of the persona’s loss and the meaninglessness that his life is presently experiencing.

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