A Comparison of Figures of Speech in "A Rose for Emily" and "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone."

In the poem “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,” by W.H. Audenir, and in the short story “A Rose for Emily,” written by William Faulkner, both female protagonists are dealing the loss of a loved one and are hindered by their emotions; unable to move forward with their lives. The figures of speech used in both writings helps the reader to picture the women and better understand their emotional and physical states.

In both stories, the protagonists lose someone that is dear to them. For Emily, the loss of her father leaves her lonely and unhappy. Emily is compared to “…a fallen monument” (206,) which means that she is an unchanging object, that stays as it is for the entirety of it’s existence. This loneliness scars her and leaves her terrified of living life without a loved one by her side. “Her skeleton was small and spare…” (207,) is a hyperbole, because if she is alive, she is unlikely to look as skinny as a skeleton; this description makes me imagine a frail, miserable woman. Also, the speaker describes Emily’s eyes using the simile “…looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump…” (207,) which helps to give the reader an image of a sad, lonely woman with emptiness and a cold, blackness in her eyes. Likewise, the female in “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” is mourning the loss of her male partner, whom she loved deeply. Her loss scars her by leaving her in this world alone, without the happiness that love had brought her. She tells the aeroplanes to circle the funeral “...moaning…” (line 5.) This personification leads me to think that she herself is probably moaning in pain over the loss of her beloved.

Emily and the woman in Auden’s poem are both emotionally scared from their losses and have a hard time accepting the passage of time. One man recalls that Emily’s body is as “motionless as that of an idol” (208,) showing how grim and unhappy she is and that she does not change over time, like a statue, an inanimate object, does not change over time. Emily cannot deal with the idea of time moving forward; needing to have things stay constant; life never changing. Emily is said to “…look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in church windows---sort of tragic and serene (208.) This simile paints a vivid picture of Emily, an innocent being who is depressed and in need of companionship. She doesn’t want time to move forward and she doesn’t want life to alter. As with Emily, the woman of Auden’s poem cannot grasp that time must move on, even if she has lost the man she loves. This woman is completely in love with her mate, saying “He was my North, my South, my East and West” (line 9). When he dies, she wishes, and even commands, that life stops moving forward. The personification “Silence the pianos…” (line 3) shows that she wishes for even sound to stop. She has an obvious fear of time moving forward. The thought of moving on with her life alone, without her the man she loves so deeply, is an incomprehensible concept. She even wants to “Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun” (line 14,) a personification that leads the reader to believe she is not thinking clearly and in her grief, she is going as far as to wish to pack the moon in a box and store it away; an impossible task.

Both Emily and this mourning woman can’t live alone and if they are forced to, they wish for time to halt. The use of similes in “A Rose for Emily” helps to paint the image of a lonely, sad woman in my mind. In “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,” it is the personifications that help me to understand that the woman is in such agony over her loss that she is unable to function normally anymore, unable to decipher between what is possible and what is impossible.