Home Is So Sad- L Flashcards
Context
The poem was written on New Year’s Eve in 1958 after Larkin returned from a Christmas visit to his mother in Loughborough
Structure
-structured around a regular rhythm and rhyme I am big pentameter and ABAB rhyme
-However like it makes use of enjambment and cesura to maintain a colloquial rhythm overlaying this fixed structure
-Noticeable between lines 2 and 3 to emphasise the idea of winning back in between the standards with a turn again
-This enhances the melancholy resigned tone of Larkins musings
“Home is so sad”
Repeated title as a blank statement of fact if as if he is not talking about his mother’s home, but everyone’s stating a universal truth
-The speaker personify Home and describes a sad I thought Mrs. It’s form of residence
-However the sadness is really a projection of the former residence nostalgia for the Home for what they once hoped the Home might be
“ it stays as we left it, shaped to the comfort of the last to go as if it win them back”
Is the image of the Home is subtly personified as if it were a lover that moulded itself to please the last person I loved hoping they will return
-It’s as if this inviting arrangement might convince the departed to return
-by keeping everything the way they liked Home thinks it can persuade them to return
-similie portrays the homeless wistfully sad maybe even a little heartbroken
-Of course this personification is really projection of human feelings. It might reflect the bittersweet nostalgia of someone who’s left home the loneliness of someone who stayed behind or both.
“Instead bereft” “no heart”
However, when they do not return it is breath grief stricken with loss and does not have the heart to start over and try again
“Turn again to what it started” “joyous shot/ long fallen wide”
If it was a try again, it would have to have another shot at being with a Home ought to be a place of joy
- This one like an arrow has missed its mark and fallen wide
- The promise of domestic happiness and comfort has been disappointed
“You can see how it was/ pictures and cutlery” “the music in the piano stool” “ that vase”
Larkin drawers into the room with the direct address and show us what he can see is scanning the room
- The short sentence is carefully picked out those items which had significance
-They now seem strangely lifeless more like objects in a museum rather than the daily use such as the music on the piano stool which is hidden away
- he ends with the simple poignant that vase empty now of flowers
-The items reflect the compass the residence once enjoyed and the hopes they want cherished
-But now they’re generic even cliche furnishing and they also reflect the mundane reality of the residence lives
-Picture music and vase are all linked to the arts. These items may reflect the creative aspirations of the Home former residence. They also suggest the residence hoped Home itself would resemble a work of art however this idealistic vision has fallen wide of the mark
-Symbolically that Home itself was like I would be work of art a visit to one’s old home then resembles a trip to a museum of broken dreams all the objects are still in place so familiar yet so sad
-these items are or generic and perfectly ordinary as a result they suggest that life at the home was itself perfectly ordinary as opposed to blissfully ideal the joy is fantasy of a dream. Home gave away to mundane domestic reality in the end.
About
The poem describes the sadness of visiting a home after extended time away and more generally the sadness of the failed dreams that people invest in their homes
“Having no heart”
-it plays on the idiom Home is where the heart is
-The speaker says that the abandoned home has no heart to get over its loss
-It cannot go back to ‘what it started as’ a sight of optimism aspiration
-It reflects disappointment and hopelessness
“Withers” ‘put aside the theft”
Instead of winning back, the people who wants to live there instead it deteriorates metaphorically with in their absence as if losing the life and energy that one sustained it
-Home 😝 experience is the departure of its residence as a theft as there is something valuable has been truly stolen from it. It cannot get over its loss the loss of human residence tears the heart out of a home.
“ a joyous shot at how things ought to be long fallen wide”
When people move into a home, they feel joyous
-They take their best shot at making an ideal setting they want their home to reflect the way ought to be
- There was no second shot and no second chance to build that perfect life so Home 😝 can never again turn to a site of innocent joy optimism
