Arrivals, Departures

Question 1

“This town has docks where channel boats come sidling;”

Answer 1

• Motif of tranquility : pleasant and calming
• Port town : reiterates the movement of the boat
• Opportunity

Question 2

“Tame water lanes, tall sheds, the traveller sees”

Answer 2

• Asyndetic listing : picturesque and pastoral imagery
• Seen as a desirable setting
• Emphasises a sense of tranquility

Question 3

“(His bag of samples knocking at his knees)”

Answer 3

• Parenthesis : emphasises small opportunity yet doesn’t give a full indication
• Alliteration : Sense of exploration and excitement, sense of fear or potentially happiness

Question 4

“Still under slackened engines gliding, his advent blurted to the morning shore”

Answer 4

• Motif of movement : emphasises the impermanence of opportunity constantly moving and being lost
• Sporadic and spontaneous

Question 5

“And we barely recalled sleep from there, sense arrivals lowing in a doleful distance”

Answer 5

• Setting : creates a sense of hope and opportunity
• Internal feeling, intangible, subconscious desire to be there, unsettling
• Hypallage : attributed to cow sounds emphasise the monotonous nature of everyday routine, mocks societal expectations
• Initially not enticing but becomes
• Failure to take opportunity will result in regret and remorse

Question 6

“Horny dilemmas at the gate once more. Come and choose wrong, they cry, come and choose wrong”

Answer 6

• Pun / metaphor : sardonically details the dilemma of a lack of satisfactory conclusion
• Both painful and neither promote happiness emphasising the speakers pessimism
• Repetition emphasises the voice of society through italics - emphasises the lack of happy conclusion, sense of definitiveness and inescapable
• Subconscious longing for something else

Question 7

“And so we rise. At night again”

Answer 7

• Monosyllabic + caesura : emphasises the inevitability of the outcome and acts as solidification
• Repetitive nature : shows a sense of tiredness, keeps individuals up at night (haunting effect)

Question 8

“Calling the traveler now, the outward bound”

Answer 8

• Demanding tone : progression of the speaker, takes the opportunity and gives in to desire
• Takes agency over destiny

Question 9

“O not for long, they cry, O not for long”

Answer 9

• Parallelism to previously for the voice of society
• Repetition : emphasises the universal experience, emphasises the impermanence of opportunity
• Pressure / intensity, italics

Question 10

“And we are nudged from comfort, never knowing how safely we may disregard their blowing”

Answer 10

• Rhyming couplet emphasises the rapid, irreversible speed of opportunity emphasising the lack of permanence
• Represents the state the speaker was in before

Question 11

“Or if, this night, happiness too is going”

Answer 11

• Personification : lack of comfort and uncertainty
• Opportunity is presented as unknown, questioning of the right choice, typical of Larkin
• Symbolic use of light emphasises how quickly time passes and therefore opportunity is missed
• Structural parallel

Question 12

STRUCTURE

Answer 12

• Syncopated rhyme scheme : ABBAC - Opportunity slowly passes away lingering doubt we have surrounding opportunities
• Half rhyme at beginning of poem emphasises the speakers indecision

Question 13

CONTEXT

Answer 13

• Winifred Arnott : Broke up with her “nothing can be done about me being unhappy”
• Moved 5 times 1953 from Belfast to Hull
• Rejected Poet Laurette twice
• The Movement : “honest, unsentimental and routed in everyday experience” / “man at the bustop”