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Stop All The Clocks Metaphors

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In W. H. Auden’s poem “Stop All the Clocks” the speaker’s nihilistic views after the death of his lover are expressed in stanzas one and four. In the first stanza, the speaker uses the muffling of sounds as a metaphor for his wish for detachment from reality after his lover’s death. In the fourth stanza, the speaker’s illogical demands to disrupt the natural phenomena reveals that the death of his lover devastated him and that the world is no longer meaningful to him. The metaphorical commands in these stanzas reveal that the world after the death of the speaker's loved one is forlorn, dark, and absurd to him.
The figurative language in the first stanza indicates that the death of the speaker’s loved one causes him to wish to become detached …show more content…
In stanza four, metaphors involving natural phenomena are used to demonstrate the speaker’s devastation and disorientation about his lover’s death. The speaker employs metaphors of celestial objects to express his devastation about his lover’s death. He demands the “stars” (13), “the moon” and “the sun” (14) to be obliterated from the sky, which would create darkness, as these heavenly bodies emit light. The metaphor equates the eradication of these heavenly bodies to the loss of the speaker’s lover, and the darkness created from the disappearance of these celestial objects is that of the darkness and despair the speaker experiences from his lover’s death. The metaphor of disruption in the natural phenomena reveals the belief of the speaker that the cessation of his lover’s existence is anomalous to him. In addition to the removal of celestial objects, the speaker also asks for the ocean to be “pour[ed] away” and woods to be “swe[pt] up” (15), which are unnatural and impossible to achieve. The absurdity of these commands is the same as the unreasonableness of his lover’s death to the speaker. These futile commands also express the speaker’s helplessness and despair in this situation, as opposed to him trying to remain in control as observed from the lucid commands in stanza one. Just like these irrational commands, a life without his lover is illogical and unimaginable to the speaker. A world without his lover is a dark one that does not make

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