Stop All The Clocks- W.H. Auden

Auden’s poem follows a traditional rhyming scheme of AABB and has four stanzas with four lines in each. The poem has a generally pessimistic tone and this is because the narrator is mourning the death of a loved one. The opening line “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” proposes unrealistic actions which imply the narrator has been heavily struck by grief, and would prefer that the world stopped altogether. Furthermore, the reference to time may be a comment on the brevity of life and how the clocks have stopped for the deceased.

The first stage of grief is often denial and this is represented in the opening stanza by the narrator’s unrealistic propositions. The second stanza opens with the lines “Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead/ Scribbling on the sky the message He is dead.” The use of the word ‘moaning’ to describe the noise made by the planes is effective because it’s similar to the word ‘mourning’ and represents the aspect of death in the poem. The image of a plane writing the message ‘He is dead’ in the sky suggests that the person who has died was well known, and this is reinforced by the idea of putting “crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves.” However, planes are unlikely to share this message and public doves are unlikely to wear crepe bows making these more unrealistic propositions and further evidence of the narrator’s denial.

With the third stanza comes an obvious shift in tone. An intimate relationship is implied by the fact that “He was my North, my South, my East and West/ My working week and my Sunday rest”. The reader learns that a man has died, however the relationship is never made explicit. The poem could be a man mourning a man, a woman mourning a man or even a man/woman mourning someone that they didn’t know personally but who had a powerful influence on their life (politician, celebrity etc.) Although the narrator is left partially ambiguous, the final line of the third stanza, “I thought that love would last forever”, suggests naivety, and reinforces the narrator’s disillusioned interpretation of time.

The narrator becomes angry in the final stanza, and Auden uses hyperbolic metaphor’s such as “Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun” to represent the void left by the lovers death. The final line is extremely pessimistic: “nothing now can ever come to any good”. This is further evidence of the narrator’s depressive state and concludes the poem in the same melancholy tone that has persisted throughout. Auden’s narrator is hyperbolic, disillusioned and unrealistic, and this is arguably a comment on the power of love to bypass reason and reality, in this case unfortunately for the worse. 

The End of an Affair- Graham Greene

The End of an Affair is a semi-autobiographical novel, written from the perspective of an up and coming novelist, and set with the back drop of World War II. The protagonist Maurice Bendrix starts an affair with his friend’s wife Sarah. Sarah’s husband is a civil servant whose impotence and general dullness leads her towards other men, but Maurice struggles to cope when she cuts off their affair without an explanation.

This is the last in a series of novels written by Greene which focus on Catholicism and religious belief. Through Greene’s protagonist many questions are raised of religion, such as whether belief in God can lead to a sense of loneliness and whether or not it injects false hope into people. Therefore it’s possible that Greene wrote these novels in an attempt to propose and make sense of these big questions himself. The character of Sarah is loosely based on a lover Greene once had, further demonstrating the autobiographical nature of the novel.

A bomb strikes outside Maurice’s house and Sarah find him limp underneath the dislodged door. Believing him dead she prays that if God brings him back she will leave Maurice and repent her adulterous sins. Maurice was merely unconsciousness and when he rises from the ‘dead’ Sarah slowly but surely starts believing in God.

One book review describes the novel as a “three-way collision between love of self, love of another and love of God.” Maurice becomes fixated in trying to find out if Sarah left him for another man and who this other man may be, before discovering that God’s presence had replaced him in Sarah’s heart. This leads to a deep resentment towards the religion that has taken away his one true love: “I wanted Sarah for a lifetime and you took her away.” 

Maurice’s resentment of religion grows into undisguised hatred. However as the novel draws to a close, Maurice seems to unwillingly draw closer and closer to the conclusion that God exists, and the novel ends with him speaking directly to God and asking to be left alone forever. This suggests that he is resigned to the fact that whether he likes it or not, God has power over him.

As well as love of God, the love depicted between Maurice and Sarah is crucial to the story. Maurice says that “there was never any question of who wanted whom- we were together in desire” and although their relationship originates from lust, it develops intensely into something else. Maurice claims “even vacancy was crowded with her”, demonstrating the ‘love of another’ that I mentioned earlier. I enjoyed the novel, and would like to read The Heart of the Matter by Greene next because it also explores Catholicism and is set in West Africa. 

On Chesil Beach- Ian McEwan

On Chesil Beach is a short novel, telling the story of two young lovers whose lives are transformed on their wedding night by words not said and gestures not made. McEwan wrote the novel with the intention that it could be read over three hours and therefore be recollected in "real time", as the events take place in a brief yet significant evening. The novel is set in pre-libertarian 1962, occcasionally described as the year before sex was invented, which would explain the statement in the opening sentence that "they lived in a time when conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible."

Edward and Florence retire to their honeymoon suite overlooking Chesil beach, part of the Dorset coastline, and immediately both become victim to convention by believing that sex on their wedding night is obligatory, despite their strong inclination against doing so. By continuously switching between the two characters McEwan effectively creates a sense of dramatic irony as the two halves of the newly wed couple believe they are alone and powerless, when in fact the feeling of unease is mutual.

In an article written in the New York Times by Jonathon Lethem, McEwan's writing style is described as "microscopic" and his vocabulary as "forensic". By using scientific language to describe McEwan's style Lethem is portraying On Chesil Beach as carefully studied, each word with it's own place and each sentence with an important meaning. This is an accurate portrayal of On Chesil Beach because it's pithy nature is what sets it apart from other loves stories I have read.

The Observer review interestingly writes that McEwan details "the chance of Florence and Edward's meeting, and the little mythologies they had established with each other to make love seem like fate." In writing this, the reviewer is suggesting that although McEwan has led the reader to believe that the love they share is a consequence of fate, love at first sight and generally meant to be, it is in fact all a creation by the characters themselves. Therefore perhaps the novel is expressing the innefficiency of believing in such ideals as fate in terms of love.

Ian McEwan is often described as a modern literary legend and this was his first book I have read. Next I am going to read perhaps his most infamous and classical love story, once described by McEwan himself as his "Jane Austen novel"; Atonement. It will be interesting comparing the writing style in both and generally looking for similarlities and differences between the texts.

A Room with a View- E.M. Forster

A Room with a View is a novel written by E.M. Forster and published in 1908. The novel tells the story of a well brought up girl, Lucy Honeychurch, and her falling in love with a similarly young but endlessly more eccentic boy named George Emerson. George and his father, Mr Emerson, represent a new generation of thinkers distinctly different to Lucy and the rigid Edwardian society that restrains her. Goerge's persistent claim that he "shall want to live" and the confusion this evokes in Lucy is just one of many examples of how George's enlightened outlook on life is greatly contrasted to the strict Victorian culture which is criticised by Forster in the novel.

Despite Forster presenting Lucy as thouroughly naive and frustratingly conventional in the face of love, there are hints to a more interesting character which has merely been supressed by the society in which she has been brought up. For example, Lucy enjoys playing the piano and appears to be adept at doing so, causing the amiable Mr Beebe to comment that "if Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live, as she plays, it would be very exciting- both for us- and for her." Furthermore it is often after playing Beethoven that Lucy's emotions are most heightened; Mr Beebe once remarks that "naturally one would be- stirred up..." The metaphor of music as a form of escape continues to the extent that after Lucy and George witness a man being killed in the Piazzo Signoria, Lucy feels she has "crossed some spiritual boundary" and the roar of the river Arno is described as an "unexpected melody to her ears." The use of the word "melody" suggests that Lucy's enlightenment to the snobbery of the Edwardian society that surrounds her will have it's groundings in music.

Although I have not explored the novel in great detail (and may edit this piece after further study) I have established the that in Lucy and George, Forster has created two lovers who have to overcome greatly prejudiced societies in order to be together. This idea is recurrent in history (Romeo and Juliet springs to mind, as does Pride and Prejudice) and the concept of love overcoming great obstacles represents an aspect of courtly love which has been popularly employed by writers both past and present.

The Miller's Tale- Geoffrey Chaucer

The Miller’s Tale is a satirical story written by Geoffrey Chaucer as part of his Canterbury Tales in the 14^th century. In the two extracts we have looked at from this tale Chaucer describes the courtship of a woman named Alisoun by two very different men. In the first, Alisoun is wooed by a young man named Nicholas who is extremely vulgar, and is described by Chaucer as being subtle and cunning. But his attempt at courtship in this passage is neither of the two because he grabs her by the queynte (female genitalia) and says “For deerne love of thee, lemman (sweetheart), I spill.” The use of the word spill is a sexual innuendo and this is common throughout Nicholas’ short but effective courting of Alisoun.

On the contrary, the second man, Absolon, is depicted as being proper and pompous. Absolon “kembd his hair” and “cheweth greyn and lychorys (sweet smelling things)” so that he smells and looks sweet for Alisoun. Although Absolon is far more gentlemanly and apparently charming in his attempt at winning Alisoun he is unsuccessful unlike Nicholas, and by doing this Chaucer is mocking the divine, courtly love that other writers of his period were obsessed by. Chaucer’s hero (Nicholas) is unconventional, humorous, and in this way Chaucer in inverting the norm and being different and exciting.

One obvious difference in the men and the courtship they embark on is that Nicholas uses far fewer words in his wooing of Alisoun. The blocks of dialogue in both texts stand out and it is for reason I believe Chaucer is presenting the use of fewer words by Nicholas as vital to his success.  Furthermore, the use of rhyming couplets by Chaucer effectively lets the narrative role of the tongue and sound natural, adding greatly to the comic effect of the text.

The way in which the apparently less educated man successfully woos the women is similar to A Room with a View by E.M. Forster. In this novel Forster presents an amiable woman who falls in love with an uneducated man named George Emerson. Lucy ends up leaving her upper class, book loving husband because of her desire to be with another man.  Similarly to the extract from The Miller’s Tale, both men are upfront in their attempts as wooing the woman and both involve physical touch. This exemplifies the way both authors present Eros, physical love, triumphing over more spiritual, divine love. This is interesting because divine love has always been seen as more powerful and ambitious whereas Eros is more animalistic; however in both texts Eros is represented as true, instinctive love.

Chaucer’s humour and the description of Nicholas grabbing Alisoun  by the queynte is shocking to a 21^st century audience and therefore must have been groundbreaking in the 14^th century when it was written. Other novelists of the time portrayed true love as non-physical like Chaucer does in A Knights Tale. However in The Miller’s Tale the opposite is true.