Stop All The Clocks

The idea of loss is prevalent in both “Stop all the Clocks” by W.H Auden and “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath. Auden’s poem reveals the travesty of death and the consuming emotions which accompany the devastation of the physical loss of a loved one, whereas, Plath depicts the symbolic loss of identity through the inevitable process of ageing.

The initial stanza of Auden’s “Stop all the Clocks” introduces the idea of loss by allowing readers to identify the grief and sorrow evoked by death. His narrator demands “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,” because he is consumed by the anguish of grief. Each sound around him is contrary to his feelings where he stipulates to “prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone” as life cannot continue when

Auden describes his loved one as his metaphorical “North”, “South”, “East and West” and demonstrates his importance to every facet of his life. He was his alliterative “working week” and metaphorical “Sunday rest” but when he dies the narrator comes to the horrendous realisation that he “was wrong” because love does not “last forever”. Similarly, Plath’s narrator acknowledges that the mirror is essential to her life. Transforming into a metaphorical “lake” she searches its “reaches for what she really is” as it is “important” to the woman who “each morning” stands in front of it and “replaces the darkness”. Plath depicts a lack of love for oneself because as the woman ages, she metaphorically “turns to those liars, the candles or the moon” to hide her reality of inevitable decrepitude through

Rossetti’s narrator reiterates to “remember” her when she is “gone away” as she does not possess the ability to “half turn to go” or choose to “stay”, where vulnerability is emphasized as death is final. Contrastingly, Angelou’s narrator compares herself to “dust” where similar to this; she will “rise” as she is determined to overcome the “bitter, twisted lies” of gender and racial stigmas, where she refuses to be confined by her role in society. Where Rossetti’s poem evokes a sombre tone because she will be going metaphorically “far away into the silent land” of death, Angelou insinuates that although her antagonist may metaphorically “trod” her in the “dirt”, her fortitude will “rise” through the refusal to be victimized. Through the first person narration in both poems, triumph despite adversity remains a focus because where “Remember” aims for integrity and purity of her memory, the narrator in “Still I Rise” refuses to be disrespected by