"Stop the Clocks" W.H Auden.

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IB English Commentary

“Stop the Clocks” W.H Auden

“For nothing now can ever come to any good”

In Auden’s mournful poem “Stop the Clocks,” there is very much a sense of hopelessness and world-weary cynicism following the death of a close friend, companion and lover. The speaker seems to condemn himself and the world to a life emptied of beauty, music, light and indeed love as he commands: “dismantle the sun” and “silence the pianos,” leaving an empty grey world to mirror his state of mind. Time is presented as utterly interminable, despite the speaker’s efforts to ‘stop the clocks,’ which perhaps embody the basic clockwork of humanity- our patterns and conventions. Composed in 1936 and following the first world war – a time when loss was mandatory – the speaker is so sunken in the deep pit of depression he wishes the whole world to mourn with him: “Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.” Auden is perhaps suggesting that living with a broken heart is the ultimate punishment- that without love, life is just not worth living.

The title of the poem immediately suggests stopping time- the universal axis on which society rotates. “Stop the Clocks” brings connotations of chaos and disorder, as clocks are perhaps symbolic of regimented order in mankind’s natural rhythms and processes. The speaker perhaps finds it not worth worrying about that the “times winged chariot” is constantly bearing down, that it never stops, not even with a physical ‘stopping of clocks.’ Auden’s use of time imagery in “my noon, my midnight” forces us to empathise with this man who has lost everything, and is also perhaps a reference to his sexual frustration since his partner’s death.

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The rigid four-stanza structure of the poem also suggests the repetitious, monotonous ticking of a clock that can never be stopped. The form seems to constrict the speaker, as perhaps memories of the past relentlessly impose upon his life. The poem seems to be in the form of a funeral elegy, deliberately chosen by Auden to force us to take a more somber perspective and sympathize with the speaker. The strong rhyming couplet scheme exemplifies the almost hypnotic, rhythmic droning the speaker can never escape, or ironically, perhaps only through death.

The overall tone of the ...

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