The Mood in Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden
The poem, "Funeral Blues", by W.H. Auden tells about a
person's grief and is successful in creating a very sad and depressing
mood. This is achieved by the poet's use of language, word choice and
sentence structure. The way in which the author describes his feeling
- along with the use of rhythm and rhyme - was created in a very
effective way which made it clear to the reader.
In the first stanza the depressing mood is created straight away by
the poet's use of commands, which created the impression that he
wanted the whole world to come to a stand still:
"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone"
These particular commands are demanding silence from everyone as he is
requesting silence from everyone as he wants the clocks to stop
ticking, the phone to stop ringing, the dog to be quiet and basically
every aspect of normal, everyday life to come to a halt. By doing this
the author has made it obvious that the person he has lost was his
whole world and he feels as if the world cannot go on anymore without
this person.
W.H Auden also made effective use of rhythm and rhyme in order to
create the atmosphere, which exists at a funeral:
"…with muffled drum,
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come."
By the use of the word 'muffled' I was given the impression of a
foggy, depressing and cold day with the coffin being removed from the
black hearse. I thought it to be effective when 'drum' was mentioned
as normally it is at state funerals for very important people where
drums are used. The impression I received was that it...
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...der to swallow pills. This is then continued as the next line
is telling of the complete despair that he feels and shows the lack of
hope and happiness he possesses:
"For nothing now can ever come to any good."
The use of the word nothing also shows he does not see a future for
himself anymore. As it is a short sentence and if you follow the
rhythm intended it is a drowsy beat which again extends the overdose
idea as it is him falling asleep and puts him out of his misery but at
the same time the ending remains sad and does not give a happy ending.
In conclusion, Funeral Blues by W.H Auden was successful in creating a
very depressing mood that was full of despair and contained absolutely
no hope. This was effective by the use of simple language, sentence
structure and most importantly the use of rhythm and rhyme.
Imagine that the person you love most in the world dies. How would you cope with the loss? Death and grieving is an agonizing and inevitable part of life. No one is immune from death’s insidious and frigid grip. Individuals vary in their emotional reactions to loss. There is no right or wrong way to grieve (Huffman, 2012, p.183), it is a melancholy ordeal, but a necessary one (Johnson, 2007). In the following: the five stages of grief, the symptoms of grief, coping with grief, and unusual customs of mourning with particular emphasis on mourning at its most extravagant, during the Victorian era, will all be discussed in this essay (Smith, 2014).
drugged and causes him to fall into a very deep sleep. When he awakes, he finds himself
"At times there seemed rhythm, at times there was the illusion of a Western melody. But the ear, baffled repeatedly, soon lost any clue, and wandered in a maze of noises, none harsh or unpleasant, none intelligible.... The sounds continued and ceased after a few moments as casually as they had begun - apparently half through a bar, and upon the subdominant" (84-85).
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where every third line had to rhyme and the last two lines also had to
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