Unseen Poetry practice question
Funeral Blues by W.H.Auden (1907-1973)
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.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Questions and suggested response
a) What do you think are some emotions experienced by the narrator of the poem? Refer to the poem closely and provide specific evidence.
Intro: This poem is about the loss of a loved one either through death or through a break-up and how we are left feeling after losing someone we dearly love. The narrator of the poem is deeply affected by his loss and the mood of the poem is largely depressing and gloomy/bleak. Some emotions the narrator experiences are despair, grief/devastation, aimlessness, and bitterness (about 4 emotions will do).
Body:
Para 1 -
Having lost a loved one, the narrator feels a great sense of despair. This can be seen through the lines "I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong" and "For nothing now can ever come to any good." These lines reveal that the narrator has lost all hope in being able to find love again. When he was in love, he thought that it would be permanent. However, he is in a sense deceived as he has had his love separated from him. Therefore, he is likely to be feeling lost and hopeless. The second line quoted reveals his total sense of hopelessness as he feels that there will not be happiness in his life ever again, and possibly that he will not be able to love again.
Para 2 -
Grief/devastation is another emotion experienced by the narrator. Right from stanza 1, his deep sorrow is evident. He wants there to be silence and cries, "Silence the pianos and with muffled drum/Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come." He is so shaken by the death of his loved one that he does not want there to be any sound or pleasurable music such as the music from pianos. Even the sound of drums has to be reduced to a mere muffle. He wants peace and quiteness to mourn to his loss. The coffin and mourners could be to take away the dead person on a literal level, or it could also refer to the narrator's own death - a part of him could have felt like it has died in grief, and so in a figurative sense, a coffin is needed to carry away the part of the narrator that has died. This shows the narrator's extreme sorrow at losing his loved one, which is beyond his control. The last stanza again reinforces his utter devastation through the impossible tasks he wants there to take place, sucha s the dismantling of the sun and puiring away fo the ocean. The depth of his grief is culminated in the last line, which is very striking and hard-hitting - 'For nothing now can ever come to any good." This line shows his hopelessness and utter devastation as he feels that he is unable to live life again without his loved one with him.
Para 3 -
The narrator clearly feels lost and aimless because he has lost his loved one. This person has been taken from his life suddenly and he feels as if his life has become pointless. This can be seen through the line "Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead". Circling aeroplanes suggests aimlessness and in a similar way, he feels that his life has become aimless meaningless without his partner. This sense of aimlessness is further reinforced in stanza 3, where the narrator says that his loved one was "my North, my South, my East and West,/My working week and my Sunday rest,/My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song". His loved one gave his direction and a sense of purpose in life and they had a close relationship as these lines reveal that they spent a lot of time together. However, now without the partner, the narrator is really lost and aimless.
Para 4 -
The narartor is probably also feeling very bitter at life for suddenly taking his loved one away from him. In stanza 1, he asks all the clocks to be stopped and wants the telephones to be cut, and the joyfully barking puppy with a bone in its mouth to be silenced. This shows that since he is mourning in grief, he does not want anyone else to experience pleasure in life. Instead, he wants them to participate in his sorrow. He is bitter as he feels that the whole world must stop their activities for him.
Conclusion: In summary, the narartor goes through emotions like despair, grief/devastation, and bitterness due to the loss of his loved one. He also feels aimless and as if his life has become meaningless without his partner.
b) The narrator in this poem is clearly affected by the loss of his loved one. How does Auden make us feel the narrator’s deep sense of loss through his language and tone?
Intro: The tone in this poem is rather depressing and bleak, showing us the emotional state of the narrator. Together with this, the poet also conveys the narrator's deep sense of loss through his use of language, which includes devices such as personification, metaphor, symbols and word choice (diction)
Body:
Para 1 -
The tone of the poem is very gloomy and depressing. Through lines such as "Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come", he portrays the effects of death on an individual. He does not want any (pleasurable) sounds anymore and only wants silence so that he can reflect on (the dead person) and mourn his loss quietly. The sudden loss of a loved one is too much for the narrator to handle and he laments the trauma of death/loss in misery, " I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong". This shows the bitterness and sense of deception experienced by him. Also, the final line of the poem reinforces its bleak and depressing tone - "For nothing now can ever come to any good." This makes us feel the narrator's total sense of despair and hopelessness. He feels that he will never be able to love again and that there is nothing left to look forward to in life. Therefore, we are able to empathise with his distress and suffering.
The use of assonance also contributes to the sombre and sorrowful tone. The use of assonance is seen in line 6, where aeroplanes are “moaning overhead”. The stressing of the ‘o’ sound seems like a long sigh, which reflects the sorrowful state of the narrator, and makes it seem as if even the aeroplanes (inanimate objects) can feel her anguish. This makes us feel her deep sense of loss and contributes to the melancholic tone of the poem. (Note: assonance is actually a sound device not really a langauge device, which is why I am discussing it under tone and not language)
Para 2 -
One of the language devices Auden uses is hyperbole. This can be seen particularly in stanza 4, where the narrator expects impossible, exaggerated tasks to happen, such as putting out the stars, packing up the moon, dismantling the sun, pouring away the ocean and sweeping up the woods. Through the use of hyperbole, the poet creates a dramatic and almost comic tone. He makes us feel the narrator's pain - it is so deep that the world coming to a standstill is not enough, but even the stars, moon and sun have to be removed. This exaggerated ending serves to strengthen the sombre tone of the poem, therefore showing us how much the dead person meant to the narrator and how deeply affected he is bythe separation. The dramatic tone here could be to hide the utter devastation and hopelessness the narrator experiences.
Para 3 -
Auden uses personification to show us the depth of the narrator's grief. For instance, in line 6, he writes that aeroplanes circle “moaning overhead”. They scribble on the sky the message that he is dead. The aeroplanes are portrayed as having human characteristics to inform everyone that he is dead. This tells the reader that the narrator's sense of sorrow is so deep that even aeroplanes are portrayed as being able to feel and participate in his sorrow. Therefore, they take on the role of informing the whole world of his loss.
Para 4 -
Another language device used by Auden is metaphor. This can be seen from line 6, "Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead”. The narrator compares his life after he has lost his loved one to aeroplanes circling in the sky, aimless and lost. The effect of usign this metaphor is that it shows us how depressed and directionless the narrator is now. It complements the searching tone of the poem.
Para 5 -
Auden also uses symbols such as clocks and telephones (line 1) and a dog barking with a juicy bon (line 2). Clocks symbolize time, telephones communication, and the dog with juicy bone could symbolize joy/happiness here. The narrator does not want time to pass but instead wants it to stop. He does not want to communicate with the outside world. Clocks, telephones and barking dogs all produce sound, which the narrator does not want. This could be because he wants to mourn the loss of his loved one in peaceful silence. Hence he wants to stifle all devices that can produce sound. The dog barking with the juicy bone would represent happiness. But here, the narrator seems to want everyone else to stop feeling pleasure and happiness because he himself has been deprived of joy.
Para 6 -
In the first paragraph especially, Auden uses many words that signify endings/stoppings. For example, he uses words such as "stop", "cut", "prevent" and "silence". This shows us the distress as he wants everything happy and pleasant to stop, and he wants to be left in silence so that he can mourn the loss of her loved one. It also suggests that because of the loss of his loved one, a part of the narrator's life could also have ended. This focus on every word makes us realise what dead is like through the narrator's eyes - it makes us totally lost, devastated and despairing.
In stanza 4, the poet uses words such as "put out", "pack up", "dismantle", "pour away", "sweep up". These words suggest the tearing apart or putting away of things and could indicate narrator’s wish to pack away his sorrow or painful memories (and perhaps move on in life). This also indicates some helplessness on the narrator's part, that although he wants to mourn, he also wants to move on.
Conclusion: Therefore, the poet manages to effectively convey the narrator's great sorrow and devastation through his tone and through the use of the various language devices such as hyperbole, metaphor, personification, symbolism and diction.
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.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Questions and suggested response
a) What do you think are some emotions experienced by the narrator of the poem? Refer to the poem closely and provide specific evidence.
Intro: This poem is about the loss of a loved one either through death or through a break-up and how we are left feeling after losing someone we dearly love. The narrator of the poem is deeply affected by his loss and the mood of the poem is largely depressing and gloomy/bleak. Some emotions the narrator experiences are despair, grief/devastation, aimlessness, and bitterness (about 4 emotions will do).
Body:
Para 1 -
Having lost a loved one, the narrator feels a great sense of despair. This can be seen through the lines "I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong" and "For nothing now can ever come to any good." These lines reveal that the narrator has lost all hope in being able to find love again. When he was in love, he thought that it would be permanent. However, he is in a sense deceived as he has had his love separated from him. Therefore, he is likely to be feeling lost and hopeless. The second line quoted reveals his total sense of hopelessness as he feels that there will not be happiness in his life ever again, and possibly that he will not be able to love again.
Para 2 -
Grief/devastation is another emotion experienced by the narrator. Right from stanza 1, his deep sorrow is evident. He wants there to be silence and cries, "Silence the pianos and with muffled drum/Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come." He is so shaken by the death of his loved one that he does not want there to be any sound or pleasurable music such as the music from pianos. Even the sound of drums has to be reduced to a mere muffle. He wants peace and quiteness to mourn to his loss. The coffin and mourners could be to take away the dead person on a literal level, or it could also refer to the narrator's own death - a part of him could have felt like it has died in grief, and so in a figurative sense, a coffin is needed to carry away the part of the narrator that has died. This shows the narrator's extreme sorrow at losing his loved one, which is beyond his control. The last stanza again reinforces his utter devastation through the impossible tasks he wants there to take place, sucha s the dismantling of the sun and puiring away fo the ocean. The depth of his grief is culminated in the last line, which is very striking and hard-hitting - 'For nothing now can ever come to any good." This line shows his hopelessness and utter devastation as he feels that he is unable to live life again without his loved one with him.
Para 3 -
The narrator clearly feels lost and aimless because he has lost his loved one. This person has been taken from his life suddenly and he feels as if his life has become pointless. This can be seen through the line "Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead". Circling aeroplanes suggests aimlessness and in a similar way, he feels that his life has become aimless meaningless without his partner. This sense of aimlessness is further reinforced in stanza 3, where the narrator says that his loved one was "my North, my South, my East and West,/My working week and my Sunday rest,/My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song". His loved one gave his direction and a sense of purpose in life and they had a close relationship as these lines reveal that they spent a lot of time together. However, now without the partner, the narrator is really lost and aimless.
Para 4 -
The narartor is probably also feeling very bitter at life for suddenly taking his loved one away from him. In stanza 1, he asks all the clocks to be stopped and wants the telephones to be cut, and the joyfully barking puppy with a bone in its mouth to be silenced. This shows that since he is mourning in grief, he does not want anyone else to experience pleasure in life. Instead, he wants them to participate in his sorrow. He is bitter as he feels that the whole world must stop their activities for him.
Conclusion: In summary, the narartor goes through emotions like despair, grief/devastation, and bitterness due to the loss of his loved one. He also feels aimless and as if his life has become meaningless without his partner.
b) The narrator in this poem is clearly affected by the loss of his loved one. How does Auden make us feel the narrator’s deep sense of loss through his language and tone?
Intro: The tone in this poem is rather depressing and bleak, showing us the emotional state of the narrator. Together with this, the poet also conveys the narrator's deep sense of loss through his use of language, which includes devices such as personification, metaphor, symbols and word choice (diction)
Body:
Para 1 -
The tone of the poem is very gloomy and depressing. Through lines such as "Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come", he portrays the effects of death on an individual. He does not want any (pleasurable) sounds anymore and only wants silence so that he can reflect on (the dead person) and mourn his loss quietly. The sudden loss of a loved one is too much for the narrator to handle and he laments the trauma of death/loss in misery, " I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong". This shows the bitterness and sense of deception experienced by him. Also, the final line of the poem reinforces its bleak and depressing tone - "For nothing now can ever come to any good." This makes us feel the narrator's total sense of despair and hopelessness. He feels that he will never be able to love again and that there is nothing left to look forward to in life. Therefore, we are able to empathise with his distress and suffering.
The use of assonance also contributes to the sombre and sorrowful tone. The use of assonance is seen in line 6, where aeroplanes are “moaning overhead”. The stressing of the ‘o’ sound seems like a long sigh, which reflects the sorrowful state of the narrator, and makes it seem as if even the aeroplanes (inanimate objects) can feel her anguish. This makes us feel her deep sense of loss and contributes to the melancholic tone of the poem. (Note: assonance is actually a sound device not really a langauge device, which is why I am discussing it under tone and not language)
Para 2 -
One of the language devices Auden uses is hyperbole. This can be seen particularly in stanza 4, where the narrator expects impossible, exaggerated tasks to happen, such as putting out the stars, packing up the moon, dismantling the sun, pouring away the ocean and sweeping up the woods. Through the use of hyperbole, the poet creates a dramatic and almost comic tone. He makes us feel the narrator's pain - it is so deep that the world coming to a standstill is not enough, but even the stars, moon and sun have to be removed. This exaggerated ending serves to strengthen the sombre tone of the poem, therefore showing us how much the dead person meant to the narrator and how deeply affected he is bythe separation. The dramatic tone here could be to hide the utter devastation and hopelessness the narrator experiences.
Para 3 -
Auden uses personification to show us the depth of the narrator's grief. For instance, in line 6, he writes that aeroplanes circle “moaning overhead”. They scribble on the sky the message that he is dead. The aeroplanes are portrayed as having human characteristics to inform everyone that he is dead. This tells the reader that the narrator's sense of sorrow is so deep that even aeroplanes are portrayed as being able to feel and participate in his sorrow. Therefore, they take on the role of informing the whole world of his loss.
Para 4 -
Another language device used by Auden is metaphor. This can be seen from line 6, "Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead”. The narrator compares his life after he has lost his loved one to aeroplanes circling in the sky, aimless and lost. The effect of usign this metaphor is that it shows us how depressed and directionless the narrator is now. It complements the searching tone of the poem.
Para 5 -
Auden also uses symbols such as clocks and telephones (line 1) and a dog barking with a juicy bon (line 2). Clocks symbolize time, telephones communication, and the dog with juicy bone could symbolize joy/happiness here. The narrator does not want time to pass but instead wants it to stop. He does not want to communicate with the outside world. Clocks, telephones and barking dogs all produce sound, which the narrator does not want. This could be because he wants to mourn the loss of his loved one in peaceful silence. Hence he wants to stifle all devices that can produce sound. The dog barking with the juicy bone would represent happiness. But here, the narrator seems to want everyone else to stop feeling pleasure and happiness because he himself has been deprived of joy.
Para 6 -
In the first paragraph especially, Auden uses many words that signify endings/stoppings. For example, he uses words such as "stop", "cut", "prevent" and "silence". This shows us the distress as he wants everything happy and pleasant to stop, and he wants to be left in silence so that he can mourn the loss of her loved one. It also suggests that because of the loss of his loved one, a part of the narrator's life could also have ended. This focus on every word makes us realise what dead is like through the narrator's eyes - it makes us totally lost, devastated and despairing.
In stanza 4, the poet uses words such as "put out", "pack up", "dismantle", "pour away", "sweep up". These words suggest the tearing apart or putting away of things and could indicate narrator’s wish to pack away his sorrow or painful memories (and perhaps move on in life). This also indicates some helplessness on the narrator's part, that although he wants to mourn, he also wants to move on.
Conclusion: Therefore, the poet manages to effectively convey the narrator's great sorrow and devastation through his tone and through the use of the various language devices such as hyperbole, metaphor, personification, symbolism and diction.
posted by | 5:50 PM
4 Comments:
thank you for the model essay it really helped =) but i was wondering......if u were the examiner, what marks out of 25 would u give this essay???
oh no how can u ask me to grade my own model answer haha well this would be an A quality if u asked me because:
- there is good organisation as there is a clear intro, body and conclusion, and the essay is organised around points rather than the line sequence of the poem. This means my paragraphs are based on points i wish to discuss and I am not simply going stanza by stanza.
- the PEE structure is consistently maintained so there is always a point, followed by evidence and elaboration (and the evidence is never longer than the elaboration)
- the link to the question is consistently clear so it shows the examiner the relevance of the response
- devices are not just stated but their effects are pointed out in relation to what the question asks, which is how does using the device make us feel the narrator's loss. By explaining this, we are showing that we can appreciate the poet's techniques
but does our answer have to be this long? this is like 3 full sided of a foolscape paper!
heh no. For part (a) discuss about 4 emotions, for part (b) discuss tone and 3-4 other devices, I definitely have mroe than 4 devices here.
Basically for each part, have about 4 points which you discuss in-depth. But for a whole essay question (meaning not part (a) or (b) of a passage-based qn), you may need more than 4 points.
Post a Comment
<< Home