Afternoons - context + structure

Question 1

context

Answer 1

• Philip Larkin’s poetry celebrates the ordinary details of day to day life
• Larkin never married, had children or left the UK

Question 2

structure

Answer 2

• 1st stanza: Larkin’s cynical view of marriage + deals with idea that young mothers are isolated
• language used emphasises the reoccurring theme of emptiness within the young mothers and how regimented their lives have become
• 2nd stanza: Larkin moves from general view to the individual and describes the mothers as being alone with little support from their working husbands
• 3rd stanza: Larkin focuses back onto the children and how because of them the mothers are unable to lives their own lives + are merely looking in. dreams, aspirations + needs have been put to the side