Stop All the Clocks

Stop all the clocks

"Stop all the clocks" is a poem written by Wystan Hugh Auden. The title leads us to believe that this poem is about time somehow standing still. If we notice the year in which this is written then we are led to believe that this could have something to do with the current situation in Germany, where Hitler has the power. Why do I connect the poem to a dictator in another country than the one where the author of the poem is from? Based on the title we are led to believe that these two can have some sort of connection. There could be a message of "Take a step back and look at the wider picture" hidden in the poem.

There is not a set place in which the poem takes place. It is a string of actions somehow linked together. It is followed by a string of thoughts and emotions. The lack of a set place in the poem leads me to believe that in the "real world" there might be the same problem. What if something has happened which has put the author's world on an edge? The poem has a rhyme pattern of aa, bb, cc etc. There are four stanzas which has four lines each. The poem has a rhythm but this rhythm is broken in the third stanza which is kind of awkward because it does not fit entirely in to the rest of the poem. I believe that this change marks the change from a more factual poem to the one stanza where the author actually puts himself into the poem. Therefore the change is gone in the last stanza and leaves stanza number 3 as the odd man out.

The poem is written in a quite simple language. The language or maybe the style in which the poem is written is very imagery. It is very easy to imagine what is done in the poem, apart from stanza three which we have already established as the odd man out. All this imagery is very good for the text in regards to the style. The style throughout the poem is quite gloomy. The poem does not picture a happy story. It is way more picturing a gloomy story of a loss of some kind. This poem is supposedly about love. It is very easy to read the poem as a story of a great loss of love. I do not believe that it is necessarily that way. I believe that this poem can be read as a poem about lost inspiration. In regards to the Hitler example I am not quite when people figured him out. He was figured out though and it could be that Wystan was a firm believer in what Hitler did, and figured him out in 1936. Write the story 10 years later and make the author a German man, and it could easily be as I picture. Hitler was great at manipulating and convincing the people that what he said was right. I believe that people actually loved him for what he did. He saved Germany. The last stanza is where it all ends and I believe that especially the last line is what a lot of people felt, when they finally gave up on Hitler. "For nothing now can ever come to any good". Seeing how a man could turn upon himself in that manner I would