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Analysis of funeral blues
Funeral blues wh auden essay
Funeral blues wh auden essay
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In his poem “Funeral Blues,” W.H. Auden depicts a grieving speaker who, at the loss of the speaker’s most beloved person, demands that the world around the speaker change to match the intense feeling of grief being felt. In the very first stanza, the speaker calls for respectful silence that represents his inner struggle at the loss of his love (“Overview”). Not only does the speaker call for the silence of the phone and dogs, but even time must be stopped for the sad occasion ("Funeral"). Only the gloomy sound of a “muffled drum” is welcomed by the speaker for the funeral to begin (‘Overview”). In lines 5-8, the speaker calls for a more public display of mourning from all those in the town ("Funeral"). Other than the sound of drums, airplanes …show more content…
After witnessing the scene around him, the speaker uses lines 9-12 of the poem to describe the relationship that was shared with the deceased. The deceased was the speaker’s every direction and every waking moment. Even the pattern of speech down to the speaker’s very mood was influenced by the lost love; however , in line 12, the speaker realizes that the love that was supposed to “last forever” is over. This line leads into the final lines that describe objects of affection that the speaker now find worthless due to lost love. The stars, moon and the sun have all lost their beauty, so they must all go away to match the speaker’s emotional standpoint. Feeling that love will never be recovered, the speaker ends by saying “nothing now can ever come to any good” (“Overview”). The entire poem is about totality of love and the effects of death …show more content…
As he grew up, Auden was very interested in science and technology; however, at 15, he decided to become a poet, but he still retained his love of science. As a poet, Auden often rewrote his poems. This is why so many versions of his poems can be found. “Funeral Blues” was written in what is considered Auden’s second phase of poetry. This phase is characterized by its focus on politics . During this time, he moved to America with his long time friend, Christopher Isherwood, nine months before the outbreak of WWII (Persoon). “Funeral Blues” first debuted as a song in the 1936 play, The Ascent of F6, written with Christopher Isherwood, but it was then known by its first line, “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” (“Overview”). Unlike the poem version of “Funeral Blues,” the last three stanzas are different. These stanzas, instead, describe characters in the play. Used in the play, “Funeral Blues” is used ironically to describe important men who were considered the “saviors of mankind” (Persoon). Auden then changed the stanzas for another song version that was set to music by Benjamin Britten and sung by Hedli Anderson (“Overview”). Then, in the 1993 film, Four Weddings and a Funeral, the poem was used as a eulogy for a gay character in the movie who lets “Auden speak for him about the loss of a lover” (Stade). After its success in the film, a collection of Auden’s verse and cabaret songs from the 1930’s were
As the first poem in the book it sums up the primary focus of the works in its exploration of loss, grieving, and recovery. The questions posed about the nature of God become recurring themes in the following sections, especially One and Four. The symbolism includes the image of earthly possessions sprawled out like gangly dolls, a reference possibly meant to bring about a sense of nostalgia which this poem does quite well. The final lines cement the message that this is about loss and life, the idea that once something is lost, it can no longer belong to anyone anymore brings a sense...
The interpretations of what comes after death may vary greatly across literature, but one component remains constant: there will always be movement. In her collection Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey discusses the significance, permanence and meaning of death often. The topic is intimate and personal in her life, and inescapable in the general human experience. Part I of Native Guard hosts many of the most personal poems in the collection, and those very closely related to the death of Trethewey’s mother, and the exit of her mother’s presence from her life. In “Graveyard Blues”, Trethewey examines the definition of “home” as a place of lament, in contrast to the comforting meaning in the epitaph beginning Part I, and the significance
Time is equated with constant decay throughout the entire poem, which is primarily shown in the speaker’s comparison of the concept of eternity to a desert. Love, and other concepts felt in life, are subject to this negative force of deconstruction over time, and are vanquished in death; this idea can be seen in the witty commentary at the end of the second stanza, “the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace”
“The Funeral” is written as a free verse; this means that Gordon Parks does not have limits to certain words or specific syllable amounts while writing the poem. This allows the reader to feel the speaker’s personal thoughts and breath patterns without them being changed to fit a certain rhyme or rhyme scheme. As a result, it is simpler to empathize with the speaker because it’s easier to relate to how he feels. Additionally, the reader can receive a more detailed picture of both the speaker’s past and present environments, allowing them to more clearly visualize the speaker’s change in
The first six lines of the poem highlight the incompetence of love when compared to the basic supplies for life. Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; It is quite obvious that the narrator highlights everything that requires living in line 1 through 6. Line 1 depicts the deficiency of love as a thing that is not able to provide food as compared to “meat” (1): love cannot hydrate a man as signified by “drink” (1): love cannot refresh a man as signified by “slumber” (2): it does not offer shelter as signified by “a roof against the rain” (2): love cannot give a preserving “floating spar” to a man who is in peril (3): nor will love give air to a “thickened lung” (5): love cannot “set the fractured bone” (6). The narrator describes love as a worthless element in the first 6 lines, but line 7 and line 8 express a tremendous level of violence that people are willing to commit because of the lack of love: “ Yet many a man is making friends with death / Even as I speak, for lack of love alone” (7-8). Line 7 and line 8 is an evidence to prove that no matter what the poet says about love, people are willing to die for it because it is important.
...e of this poem might be to make the reader empathize with the suffering that he/she sees in the world and try to find a way around it by reducing it. This extract teaches us that life contains suffering and suffering is due to earthly objects as the people who cared for the dead man were attached to him and this caused them to suffer. The only way out of this suffering and samsara is nirvana and this can be attained by following Buddha’s eightfold path – right view, right intention; right speech, right action, right livelihood; right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration (McHugh).
While thinking of death, thoughts of grief, despair and worry arise. Perhaps this is a product of the darkness often times portrayed of death from contemporary literature, movies, and music. Movies such as “Schindler’s List” and music such as Neil Young’s “Tonight’s the Night” are just a few examples of entertainment that show the darkness and finality of death. These forms of medium only present the idea, as no one who wrote them actually experienced death and therefore the dark thoughts associated with it are ambiguous. In “712 (Because I Could not Stop for Death)”, poet Emily Dickinson also shows the darkness associated but she has a different view of death. She writes from the standpoint of a narrator
Owen expresses his anger in a set of contrasts between a real funeral and the lack of a funeral for these young men,. For example, instead of a service with a choir. they only have ‘the shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells’. As you would expect, the tone and mood of both poems is deeply serious. as Owen has a strong message in both of them.
The phrasing of this poem can be analyzed on many levels. Holistically, the poem moves the father through three types of emotions. More specifically, the first lines of the poem depict the father s deep sadness toward the death of his son. The line Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy creates a mental picture in my mind (Line 1). I see the father standing over the coffin in his blackest of outfits with sunglasses shading his eyes from the sun because even the sun is too bright for his day of mourning. The most beautiful scarlet rose from his garden is gripped tightly in his right hand as tears cascade down his face and strike the earth with a splash that echoes like a scream in a cave, piercing the ears of those gathered there to mourn the death of his son.
The main event is the death of the child, which has happened previously to the beginning of the poem. This event foreshadows the death of the marriage which will happen after the poem. The husband and wife go through the grief process in many different ways. The wife believes that her husband does not understand her or the grief in which she feels. Online 10, she shouts at him, “You couldn't care!...
In “Home Burial” by Robert Frost, Frost portrays an argument between a couple and examines the grief two individual’s go through along with their response to each other’s grief. The poem follows a married couple and illustrates a confrontation between the two concerning their feelings towards the loss of their son, but the confrontation later reveals a deeper problem in their relationship. Frost, drawing inspiration from his own life experiences, utilizes these characters to portray that individuals have differences that cause them to respond differently to grief and how having to alter such things to please another can cause a rift in any relationship. Specifically, Frost portrays the unraveling of a relationship.
Auden, the poet who wrote “Funeral Blues,” uses hyperbolic and metaphorical language to convey the thoughts of the speaker. The tone throughout the poem is very consistent, as evidenced by the similar themes of the first and last stanzas. The speaker essentially proposes that, due to the death of this man she so dearly loved, all functions of the universe should stop immediately. The third stanza stands out from the other three, though, because it explains what her feelings were toward this man, and why her sorrow was so deep. She also expresses regret in having believed their love would last forever, which may actually reference the demise of the attraction between them, not the death of a man. Nonetheless, there is more than just language that gets the speaker’s point
The title of the poem includes the word ?funeral?, immediately indicating death or loss. In the first stanza Auden makes use of works like stop, cut, prevent and silence ? these words all signify ending.
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a poem composed by Thomas Gray over a period of ten years. Beginning shortly after the death of his close friend Richard West in 1742, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” was first published in 1751. This poem’s use of dubbal entendre may lead the intended audience away from the overall theme of death, mourning, loss, despair and sadness; however, this poem clearly uses several literary devices to convey the author’s feelings toward the death of his friend Richard West, his beloved mother, aunt and those fallen soldiers of the Civil War. This essay will discuss how Gray uses that symbolism and dubbal entendre throughout the poem to convey the inevitability of death, mourning, conflict within self, finding virtue in one’s life, dealing with one’s misfortunes and giving recognition to those who would otherwise seem insignificant.
Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden is a short poem that illustrates the emotions that he is dealing with after the love of his life passes away. The tone of this piece evokes feelings that will differ depending on the reader; therefore, the meaning of this poem is not in any way one-dimensional, resulting in inevitable ambiguity . In order to evoke emotion from his audience, Auden uses a series of different poetic devices to express the sadness and despair of losing a loved one. This poem isn’t necessarily about finding meaning or coming to some overwhelming realization, but rather about feeling emotions and understanding the pain that the speaker is experiencing. Through the use of poetic devices such as an elegy, hyperboles, imagery, metaphors, and alliterations as well as end-rhyme, Auden has created a powerful poem that accurately depicts the emotions a person will often feel when the love of their live has passed away.