Larkin

Question 1

Home is so sad - Stanza 1 key quotes

Answer 1

• ‘Home is so Sad.’ abrupt & monosyllabic
  end stop - declarative.
  Antithesis of ‘Home is where the heart is’ - subversive house - fails to fulfil purpose
  ‘bereft of anyone to please, it withers…’ - very mournful, suggests that lacking a domestic unit is an unnatural state as the home physically deteriorates

Question 2

Home is so sad - Stanza 2 key quotes

Answer 2

• ‘joyous shot at how things ought to be/Long fallen wide’ - break up of these lines symbolises the deterioration of the domestic unit, - ‘shot’ - a target or standard of living & modal verb ‘ought’ - expectations, rigidity = dependable = reflects order of domestic life
• separation of ‘be’ and ‘long fallen wide’ - symbolic of house’s failure to attain expectations
• ‘the pictures…the cutlery…music in the piano stool…That vase.’ list of domestic, personal items that suggest unfulfillment as they act more as relics or props than functional items. Music has a potential for joy but doesn’t come to fruition as it isn’t played & the vase is empty, suggesting the hollowness of the relationship.
  AO5: Shapiro: ‘uses commonplace items…gives chilling poignancy’

Question 3

Stanza 1 Rhyme

Answer 3

ABABA - lines not coupled = exaggerates the isolation of the house
- alternate rhyme scheme emphasises grieving nature ‘stays as it was left…instead bereft…’
- B rhymes - sighing, mourning

Question 4

Stanza 2 Rhyme

Answer 4

• half-rhyme - rhyme degenerates ‘‘started as…how it was…that vase’ - reflecting how the house has failed to fulfil its purpose of a home
• disruption of domestic order?

Question 5

Sunny Prestatyn

Question 8

Essential Beauty

Answer 8

• ‘block ends of streets….screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise…’ - suggests dishonesty, sf of concealment, the adverts act as a façade of econ. prosperity for the brutal reality of post-war Britain. Larkin’s anger at the arrogance of advertisement companies.
• cruel juxtapositioning of ‘above the gutter…golden butter’ which serves as a reminder of the illusion that one can aspire to this lifestyle. The stark contrast between reality & the ideal.

Question 9

Self’s the man - use of pronouns

Answer 9

refers to his wife only by ‘a woman’, ‘her’ ‘she takes’ & reference to his children as ‘the nippers’ - deeply depersonalises & dehumanises Arnold’s wife as she lacks her own identity outside of this marriage, becoming Arnold’s property

Question 9

Self’s the Man stanza 1

Answer 9

‘married a woman to stop her getting away/now she’s there all day’ - depicts marriage as a form of socio-economic entrapment for the female

Question 12

Self’s the man - structure/rhyme scheme

Answer 12

AABB rhyme scheme = monotonous relationship, the rigidity of marriage and social expectations: ‘married a woman to stop her getting away…she’s there all day’