Philip Larkin

Themes and Technical Features

Larkin’s subjects were:

“men, the life of men, the passing of time and love”.

These are personal and eternal themes. He draws on what he actually, not ideally, sees because he believed that poetry is part of life so life should be the subject matter.

Larkin’s poems are personal responses to particular experiences.

Them

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• Set in England in the 1950s and early 1960s.

• Set in a world of urban renewal:housing estates, city

centres, industrial ugliness.

• Contrasts urban ugliness with the English countryside, which represents the nostalgia of the past.

Them

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• Reality versus Illusion:“The Less Deceived”

• Reflects life and ordinary routines.• Portrays life as “inadequate,

disappointing and unfulfilling”. The speaker (persona) endures dreary routines, with dreams beyond his grasp and is occasionally surprised by happiness.

Them

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• Reality versus Illusion:“The Less Deceived”

• Individuals are presented as representative of a type e.g. ‘housewives’, ‘fathers’, ‘young people’.

• The pressures society puts us under, and the need to conform, destroy our distinctiveness and individuality.

• Ironic that our materialistic desire to express individuality through choice of objects actually makes us more alike.

• The individual is alone/outcast if he does not conform to social ideals e.g. house/car/family.

Them

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• Reality versus Illusion:“The Less Deceived”

• Most poems show individuals trapped in circumstances beyond their control – “the tyranny of chance”.

• The individual is drowned by life, desperate to escape and is obsessed by dreams.

Them

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• The Delusion of Love

• Mocks love – thinks that ‘love’ is the greatest illusion of all.

• Love is a social goal that people are told to aim for.

• At the same time there is a sense of loneliness in the voice of the persona – so that, though he mocks love, he yearns for it, being drawn to the very ideal he wants to dismiss.

Them

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• The Passage of Time

• Concerned with the passing of time – ages – and its associated loss.

• Paradox that time destroys – erodes and corrupts yet, at the same time the passing of time can preserve ideas – myth.

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• Tightly structured:Regular length of stanzasRegular length of lines

• Interest created by use of emjambment (continuance of meaning across stanzas).

• The poem’s form should reinforce the content – the means should compliment the message.

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• Rhyme varies for different effects in different poems.

• Makes use of para rhyme for sense of dislocation.

• Rhyme is often not apparent because of the Rhythm being that of a speaking voice – important to the tone.

iambic pentameter – the approximate conversational flow of English.

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• Tone (derived from word choice and rhythm).

• Uses the standard diction of intelligent conversation – the voice of someone rational and not easily deceived.

• Reader trusts the persona’s voice because it sounds so reasonable.

• Will contrast formal language with informal expression for effect.

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• Makes use of Irony

• Persona is, at times, sarcastic.

• Presents caricatures of ‘types’ of people.

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• Enacts ‘dramas’ – moving from particular specific incidents to a general reflective comment.

• Message of these dramas is to reinforce the central over-riding theme:

Life if pointless.