2ENB Short Texts Essay
For each of your studied texts, analyse how two methods used by the author affected your opinion of an important issue.
Intro:In the poems “Stop the Clocks” by WH Auden and “The Fallen Birdman” by Roger Mc Gough, both writers deal with the issue of death. Both affected my opinion. Through imperatives and hyperbole in “Stop the clocks” I realised how seriously people respond to death. In “The Fallen Birdman” I was affected by people’s lack of care, seen though the compound words and simile.
Background statement: In “Stop the Clocks”, the persona wants everyone in the world to be as depressed as he is.
First paragraph: The imperatives “stop the clocks, cut off the telephone” show that he is ordering everyone around him to suspend their lives. There is no choice, it is an order, because for him, his world has died. Because he has become so upset, he wants everyone to stop functioning too. He wants people to cease having normal contact with others and to grieve on their own, wrapped up with their misery. Auden also uses hyperbole and through his exaggeration, we can glimpse his overwhelming grief that has taken over his reason. He says “Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.” This idea is completely nonsensical and ridiculous. The moon can never be packed up as if it is a piece of luggage. That is the point. By using everyday language, Auden is showing how dislocated and out of adjustment his world is. Nothing makes sense to him anymore and he wants all the world to share in this too. ”Dismantle the sun” is also a silly and extreme wish as the sun is eternal and certainly not an object that can be unscrewed or unbolted. Again the use of hyperbole shows how extreme his feelings are. Although the words are “over the top” we can understand how badly people feel when they have lost a loved one. On TV we see the despair of people dealing with death. We have seen the absolute suffering of the Webster family, trying to come to terms with the sudden death of their son James and saying that they will never be happy again. This affected my opinion as I can now come closer to understanding how easily people’s worlds can fall apart.
Background statement of second poem: “The Fallen Birdman” is about an old man in a wheelchair who is hit by a truck in a road accident. He is compared to Icarus as the people around him do not take any notice.
Mc Gough uses compound words “oldman” “cripplechair” and “lethallorry”. Each of these devalues the man. Instead of being seen as a older man with dignity, he is described lightly as if he does not matter –he is just one of a faceless number of old people who are around. The compound word puts the individual words together to make a label that is anonymous. Likewise ”cripplechair” makes his wheel chair seem freakish. These days we have special privileges and building regulations for the disabled; here they are seen as different and not worth any consideration. This lack of care extends to the compound word “lethallorry” which almost gives it a life of its own and takes all responsibility away from the driver.