What figurative language is in Funeral Blues? poetic techniques
How is Funeral Blues an expression of loss and grief?
Critically evaluate the impact of “Funeral Blues” as an expression of loss and grief. In “Funeral Blues,”
W. H. Auden starkly illustrates the crushing sense of despair that a person can feel when their beloved dies
. They can feel like time has stopped and communication is impossible.
What is the theme of Funeral Blues?
Death
.
Death
is the subject and main theme of “Funeral Blues.” Through the poem Auden makes a compelling statement about the devastating effects that the death of a loved one has on those left behind. The speaker has just lost someone for whom he/she had a deep love.
Is Funeral Blues a lyrical poem?
Funeral Blues’ is
written in quatrains rhymed aabb
: although it is arranged into quatrains or four-line stanzas, its rhyme scheme is rhyming couplets.
Is Funeral Blues iambic pentameter?
“Funeral Blues” is written in quatrains, and
it does make use of iambic pentameter
, but it’s highly irregular in its meter, with extra syllables here and unsteady feet there. And the rhyme scheme is adjusted a bit, too: AABB instead of ABAB. Auden is using heroic couplets instead of alternating rhymes.
An elegy is
a sad poem, usually written to praise and express sorrow for someone who is dead
. Although a speech at a funeral is a eulogy, you might later compose an elegy to someone you have loved and lost to the grave. The purpose of this kind of poem is to express feelings rather than tell a story.
Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am in a thousand winds that blow, I am the softly falling snow.
Auden first wrote it in 1936 as part of The Ascent of F6, a play that he co-wrote with Christopher Isherwood. In the play,
the poem was satirical
, which means that it was snarky, mocking, and overblown. It poked fun at a dead politician, which is maybe not so classy, but something we’re all guilty of now and then.
The poem was five stanzas long when it first appeared in the 1936 verse play The Ascent of F6, written by Auden and Christopher Isherwood. It was written
as a satiric poem of mourning for a political leader
. In the play, the poem was put to music by the composer Benjamin Britten and read as a blues work.
The title and first line of the poem
demonstrate the author’s inconsolable grief by commanding the audience to do something which is not possible
, “Stop all the clocks.” This reference to time could also be an allusion to the death and brevity of life which cause the author such agony.
When you lose a loved one, you can often process the emotions better by writing them down in
an elegy
. Because the emotions surrounding death are so strong and so universal, elegies can resonate very deeply with an audience.
In the last line of the second verse, she states “Let the policemen wear black cotton gloves.” We know that
black is a symbol of death
; we also know that policemen wear white cotton gloves at a funeral. This gives us the first insight that the woman is speaking of the death of love, rather then an actual death.
Figurative language is
phrasing that goes beyond the literal meaning of words to get a message or point across
.
- Simile. A simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things and uses the words “like” or “as” and they are commonly used in everyday communication. …
- Metaphor. A metaphor is a statement that compares two things that are not alike. …
- Hyperbole. …
- Personification. …
- Synecdoche. …
- Onomatopoeia.
- 1 Simile. A simile compares two different things, using the words “like” or “as” to draw attention to the comparison. …
- 2 Metaphor. A metaphor compares two different things, similar to a simile. …
- 3 Personification. …
- 4 Hyperbole. …
- 5 Allusion.
In this touching poem, ‘Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep’, by Mary Frye,
she speaks of death in a welcoming tone
. She offers words of comfort for those who would mourn for her at her passing, and she seems to welcome death not as the ending of a life, but as the beginning of another.
Tone: While the speaker is admiring the beautiful scene created by the frost, he is critical of its trickery- disapproving and indignant. He has an
appreciative tone
when he considers the true transformation occurring below ground.
