Church Going

Question 1

What is Church Going about? What are the main themes?

Answer 1

• Considers Church to be a joke - childish mockery of religion.

Question 2

Title : Church Going

Answer 2

Pun - referring to the literal practice of going to Church, or how the relevance of Church is going from society.

Question 3

What can be said about the listing via caesura in stanza 1?

Answer 3

• Emphasises all the stuff - matting, seats, and stone etc - sense of irony as structure gives such items significance, but language seems to mock the importance.
• Juxtaposing structure - reflects his viewpoint in religion being insignificant, but still gone inside.

Question 4

‘matting, seats and stone’
‘some brass and stuff up at the holy end’

Answer 4

• Deliberately vague terms, almost as if forgettable - mocking their supposed significance.
• Deliberately colloquial language, disrespects their significance

Question 5

‘unignorable silence’

Answer 5

• Oxymoron - such silence implies no one is there. A03: Increased secularisation of 1950s.

Question 6

‘God knows how long’

Answer 6

• Pun - God is omnipresent, and omniscient - knows all, even his own irrelevance, which speaker mocks.

Question 7

‘Hatless, I take off My cycle clips in awkward reverence’

Answer 7

• Potentially a mark of respect to remove hat, more likely disrespect.
• Mocks the serious setting of the Church via silly, disrespectful joke. Worth and power of Church is fading as this image contrasts the seriousness described.

Question 8

‘Cleaned or restored?’

Answer 8

• Lost historical value, maybe about religion attempting to make itself more relevant, but has opposite effect.
• Religion losing value/significance fading. Time erodes - cannot return to what once was.

Question 9

‘Someone would know: I don’t.’

Answer 9

Careless nature emphasised via end stop. Disregards.

Question 10

‘Hectoring large-scale verses’

Answer 10

• Religion/Bible ridiculously long and monotonous.

Question 11

‘donate an Irish sixpence’

‘Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.’

Answer 11

• Had value in past, but now considered worthless - reflects state of Church - intends to insult.
• End stop reinforces disrespect towards religion/Church - worthless, no value, futile.

Question 12

‘Yet stop I did: in fact I often do’

Answer 12

• Argument marker indicates volta. Conflicts his mindset - worthless vs meaning.

Question 13

‘When churches fall completely out of use what we shall turn them into’

Answer 13

• Theme of time, and eroding nature of it.
• Shifts focus to future from present, and wonders what will become of religion - time shall erode either the Church as a building or a religion.
• More reflective, less dismissive tone

Question 14

‘parchment, plate and pyx’

Answer 14

• Structural parallel to beginning. Repeats listing with variation, focused, specific significance and value to objects (emphasised via alliteration). No longer vague/meaningless.

Question 15

‘rent-free to rain and sheep.’

Answer 15

• Emphasised via end stop. Recurrent theme of time/nature - implies these are more powerful in our world. Inevitability of time, nature will eventually take control.

Question 16

‘Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?’

Answer 16

Questioning, ends on superstition.

Question 17

‘Or, after dark, will dubious women come To make their children touch a particular stone; Pick simples for a cancer’

Answer 17

• Considers that, though time erodes value of Church/religion - still has worth/value to some people.
• ‘Dubious’ - ridiculous nature of religion, superstition.
• Reference to Lourdes in France - healing pilgrimage.

Question 18

‘Power of some sort or other will go on’

Answer 18

• Church, whether the place or religion, will always have some degree of power.

Question 19

‘Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky’

Answer 19

• Listing power of nature and time - once more reducing significance of Church.

Question 20

‘A shape less recognisable each week, A purpose more obscure.’

Answer 20

• ‘Shape’ - dismissive to place, time eroding.
• Caesura after ‘obscure’ emphasises finality. Church will eventually become irrelevant entirely.

Question 21

‘Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique, Or Christmas addict’

Answer 21

• Disrespects superficial nature towards Church, which has lessened its value and tradition.

Question 22

‘Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground’

Answer 22

Despite considering himself separate from religion (‘bored, uninformed’) and considering it as worthless, cares for and ‘tends’ to this ruined earth.

Question 23

‘because it held unspilt for so long’
‘marriage, and birth, And death’

Answer 23

• Sees the place as significant to birth, life, death, and so values the Church’s previous importance (emphasised via caesura after these-)

Question 24

‘This special-shell?’

Answer 24

• Oxymoron - Church is special, but empty/ vacant. Dual viewpoint - reiterated by ‘frowsty barn’ - empty.

Question 25

‘It pleases me to stand in silence here’

Answer 25

• Respect?

Question 26

‘A serious house on serious earth it is’
‘more serious and gravitating’

Answer 26

• Repetition of ‘serious’ - because of the Church’s serious past, it can never be meaningless/ completely erode.
• Because of memory of the place must always have some degree of importance. Time only limited effect.

Question 27

‘someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious And gravitating’

Answer 27

• Arrives at some form of conclusion that the Church will always have some form of significance to someone no matter what.

Question 28

A03: How did Larkin and his father consider religion?

Answer 28

Father told him to ‘Never believe in God’ whilst Larkin also considered religion as ‘absolute balls’

Question 29

Rhyme Scheme of Church Going:

Answer 29

• Inevitability of time eroding.