Age Flashcards
Theme?
Ageing
Life
Time
Legacy
Isolation
Whats one of the poems you can compare this with?
Skin
‘age fallen’
Growing older/reflecting on death at the end of life.
‘like white swaddling’
Protectiveness of youth has disappeared
‘tenement’
‘scuttling’
ao3 hermit of hull
ao3 anti romantic (urban setting)
‘I bend closer, discern’
Connotes gentleness of youth and how it is now intangible/hard to grasp.
Youth becomes something abstract and unreachable
Emphasised by caesura
O
Apostrophe
Shows desperation
‘game’
Game of life - metaphor
‘joining’
conforming to societal rules tires him
‘translucent bergs’
concrete imagery
berg - past
as he reflects, he realises life isnt meaningful and lacks significance (its transparent) in the wake of death. we change our approach on death.
‘Or spoor’
Nihilistic tone - final line could suggest that our achievements ultimately count for nothing when we die.
More AO3?
Age is about legacy: wrote kind of welfare state sub poetry (anti romantic sentiment, excluding the pomp of romantics)
larkin wants his poetry to be available to the everyday person - ‘man at the bus stop’
