Funeral Blues: A Poetic Exploration of Grief and Loss by W.H. Auden, Summaries of Communication

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FUNERAL BLUES

WH HAUDEN

Background of the Poet

• Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, in the United Kingdom. At Oxford, he became associated with a number of radical poets and authors, including Stephen Spender.
• Many of his poems focus on social ills, as well as concern with the workings of the mind.
• He lived and worked for many years in the United States of America and returned to the United Kingdom in 1972, where he died a year later.

Questions to think of while reading

1. Notice the plea for certain actions to take place in the first stanza. a) Why would someone want to ‘Stop all the clocks’ (line 1)? b) Identify all the references to sound. c) Why would the speaker want these sounds to stop?
2. Why do you think capital letters have been used in ‘He is Dead’ (line 6)?
3. Consider the implications of the description ‘He was my North, my South, my East and West’ (line 9).
4. Link the verbs in the final stanza to their objects: ‘put out’ (line 13), ‘pack up’, ‘dismantle’ (line 14), ‘Pour away’ and ‘sweep’ (line 15). In what way are these verbs appropriate?

CONTENT

• It is clear from the outset what the subject of the poem will be with the title ‘Funeral Blues’.
• The choice of the word ‘Blues’ is an effective one as this could refer to a depressed mood, and also describes a slow, sad musical piece.
• The reader immediately understands the call for everything to cease – time, noise, music – as soon as the reference is made to the ‘coffin’ and ‘mourners’ (line 4). The stark message ‘He Is Dead’, to be written on the sky for all to see, implies the speaker’s need for the world around him to register the passing of his beloved.

ANALYSIS

• The poem begins with a series of harsh commands: stop the clocks! Cut off the telephones!
• The speaker sounds forceful, even angry.
• Whoever the speaker is, he sounds angry, and issues harsh commands. In the first line, he wants to stop the clocks and the telephone. These seem like physical representations of time and communication to us. He wants everything to just stop.
• In the next line, he asks for silence. He wants dogs to stop barking, too.

Analysis

• As if stopping the clocks weren't enough, the speaker would like an

airplane to write "He is Dead" in skywriting to commemorate his grief. If a

funeral is a public acknowledgment of death, then this is a super public

acknowledgement of death.

• While earlier he asked for quiet, and for people to cut off their telephones

(which are private communication devices), he wants the whole world to

know that "He Is Dead."

• It's interesting that the speaker doesn't provide a name. He could have

written, for example, "John Is Dead." Or "Tommy Is Dead." But he leaves

the dead man's name anonymous. Maybe he wants more privacy after all.

Or maybe he assumes that everyone already knows "his" name. Either way,

there's an interesting mixture between private and public

acknowledgments of death.

Analysis

• More public demands, as the speaker wants even the "public doves" -

we have a strong feeling that these are pigeons - to honour the dead

man. He wants the traffic police to acknowledge him, too.

• Does the speaker really want us to put bows on pigeons? It seems our

man is getting hyperbolic again.

Analysis

• More metaphors. These lines seem to imply that the dead man filled

every hour of the speaker's day. He brought conversation and joy into

the speaker's life.

• While the previous lines were lovely and metaphorical, this one is

harsh. Your loved ones will die. No love lasts forever.

ANALYSIS

• The speaker grows even more depressed in these lines. He demands that someone, whomever he's talking to, put out the stars, pack up the moon, and take apart the sun. Now his grief is so extreme, it's affecting the way he sees the cosmos.
• His extreme, hyperbolic commands are his expressions of his extreme grief.
• Even though no one could ever "dismantle the sun," the speaker's grief is so intense that he wishes that we could. All of these romantic and natural images— the stars, the moon, the sun- are too painful for him. It's almost as if he wants to blot out everything in the world except his own mourning.

SYMBOL ANALYSIS: SILENCE

The speaker spends the first stanza of "Funeral Blues" complaining about how much he wants everyone and everything to be silent. Maybe he wants some peace and quiet to deal with his thoughts. Maybe he wants to make sure that everyone can hear his lament. Maybe he wants silence out of respect for the dead man.

• Line 1: The speaker wants to cut off personal communication with the world: he wants to stop the telephone lines from running. He's looking for isolation. He's probably being hyperbolic here, which means that he's exaggerating his feelings and desires to show just how sad and hopeless he is.

SYMBOL ANALYSIS: SILENCE

• Line 2: He also wants to stop dogs from barking. Poor dogs. It's not their fault.
• Line 3: Now he'd like people to quit playing the piano, thank you very much. Seems fair enough. This is a funeral after all.
• Lines 3-4: He wants to hear the "muffled drum" of the funeral march. The speaker wants to hear this and this only. It's like all other noise is a distraction from what really matters, which is his pain.

SYMBOL ANALYSIS: THE PUBLIC

• Lines 5 - 6: The speaker asks airplanes to proclaim the man's death

though skywriting. It's like he wants the whole world to know what

he's going through.

• Lines 7 - 8: He even wants policemen and pigeons to acknowledge the

man's death. Once again, hyperbole.

• Lines 9-12: Compared to the previous lines that deal with the public,

these lines seem quiet and intimate, and we realize what the dead

man meant to the speaker. He wants a public acknowledgment of the

man with whom he's spent his private life.

SYMBOL ANALYSIS: NATURE

Sun, moon, stars…sounds lovely, right? Well, not to our speaker. He wants all

these lovely things - and everything else in nature, it seems - to leave him

alone. The grief he feels seems to have interfered with his ability to

appreciate nature.

• Line 11: Here, the speaker says that the dead man was everything to him.

Even times of the day. Even midnight itself. These metaphors are

hyperbolic, but hey, let's cut the guy some slack. He's been through a lot.

• Lines 13-16: The speaker calls for us to "put out" the stars, "pack up the

moon and dismantle the sun." He wants every beautiful thing that nature

provides to go away. No more ocean, no more forests. This guy is so sad

that he doesn't even want the stars around to remind him of his dead

beloved. He's being hyperbolic, of course; he probably doesn't actually

think that someone could "dismantle" the sun. But he yearns for this

isolation from the natural world anyway.