Why So Much Metaphor?
W.H Auden’s speaker in “Stop all the Clocks” sets out to deliver a message of sorrow by means of excessive use of metaphor. Why is it that the speaker chooses not to use another literary device such as simile? The continual use of metaphor sets out to serve the function of blurring the lines of target and source, and to allow the reader to understand the speaker’s feelings in “Stop All the Clocks” doing which simile cannot.
Firstly the individual being mourned is the main target, now in this case the source is the objects or ideas comparing the mourned to, through use of metaphor it is hard to tell the two apart. As seen throughout Stanza three lines nine through eleven “He was my North, my South, my East, and West…My
W.H Auden’s speaker in “Stop all the Clocks” sets out to deliver a message of sorrow by means of excessive use of metaphor. Why is it that the speaker chooses not to use another literary device such as simile? The continual use of metaphor sets out to serve the function of blurring the lines of target and source, and to allow the reader to understand the speaker’s feelings in “Stop All the Clocks” doing which simile cannot.
Firstly the individual being mourned is the main target, now in this case the source is the objects or ideas comparing the mourned to, through use of metaphor it is hard to tell the two apart. As seen throughout Stanza three lines nine through eleven “He was my North, my South, my East, and West…My