Larkin Flashcards
Home is so sad - Stanza 1 key quotes
- ‘Home is so Sad.’ abrupt & monosyllabic
end stop - declarative & stative.
Antithesis of ‘Home is where the heart is’ - subversive house - fails to fulfil its expected purpose, reflecting the failures of the domestic unit itself. - Shaped to the comfort of the last to go - personification, house aims to please and fulfil the wants & needs of its inhabitants but ultimately is outgrown.
- ‘bereft of anyone to please, it withers…’ - Personification continues: very mournful, lack of nourishment & vitality which suggests that lacking a domestic unit is an unnatural state as the home physically deteriorates.
Home is so sad - Stanza 2 key quotes
- ‘joyous shot at how things ought to be/Long fallen wide’ - enjambment symbolises the deterioration of the domestic unit
- ‘joyous shot’ - used to be a hopeful action/relationship but this plan has now been abandoned. Shot suggests a target which introduces this idea of life as a gamble, things are determined by chance and luck. Also indicative of a certain social standard that is meant to be achieved, reinforced by ‘ought’ which depicts a rigidity of social expectations, perhaps the often advertised nuclear family.
- 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.
Prop-like quality = façade of the successful domestic unit, this is an an act to maintain appearances & conform to expectations lest one be outcast.
AO5: Shapiro: ‘uses commonplace items…gives chilling poignancy’
Home is So Sad Stanza 1 Rhyme
ABABA - lines not coupled = exaggerates the isolation of the house & the breakdown of the domestic unit as there is no unity.
- alternate rhyme scheme emphasises the grieving nature ‘stays as it was left/instead bereft…’ and the coupling of rhymes suggests a continual pursuit for the ‘unity’ that there once was
- B rhymes - sighing, mourning as they end on long ‘o’ sounds i.e. ‘go’ and ‘so’.
Home is so sad Stanza 2 Rhyme
half-rhyme - rhyme degenerates ‘‘started as…how it was…that vase’ - reflecting how the house has failed to fulfil its purpose of a home as it cannot achieve unity much as the poem fails to achieve unity of sound.
- reflects disruption of domestic order?
Sunny Prestatyn
Essential Beauty stanza 1 quotes
- SEMANTIC FIELD OF CONCEALMENT: ‘block ends of streets….screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise…’ - suggests dishonesty, a desire to restrict access to the truth. The adverts act as a façade of economic prosperity for the brutal reality of post-war Britain. Larkin’s anger at the arrogance of advertisement companies who attempt to conceal the realities of what the everyday person faced.
- ‘above the gutter… a knife sinks into golden butter’ - very cruel juxtapositioning = which serves as a reminder of the illusion that one can aspire to this affluent lifestyle of purchasing commodities. The actual physical/spatial difference & distance i.e. the fact that the knife is ‘high above’ evokes a sense of vast distance, underlining the fact that this is an astronomical sort of dream, extremely unachievable for the everyday person.
‘gutter’ = filth, grimy vs. ‘golden’ = precious, expensive, prized. => contrasting images of stark reality of human suffering and the idealised, heavenly portrayal of the environment = metaphor for Britain’s projection of itself as a wealthy nation in the Post-War era yet its failure to truly address or resolve issues of poverty.
- ‘Well balanced families…owe their smiles, their cars, even their youth…’ Creates a sense of a stable nuclear family, the heteronormative and capitalist ideal to aspire to. ‘Well balanced’ suggests an equality, perhaps of opportunity, reflecting the misguided belief that the ‘ideal’ life is an obtainable aspiration for all. Yet they are indebted to these commodities as they owe their very vitality to consumerism = consumerism as a devilish figure.
- ‘Radiant bars’ = heavenly, illuminating, blinding. Heavenly associations suggest that consumerism and capitalism is equatable to a sort of epiphany or an enlightenment as the ability to consume these new goods is a radical step in technology. However, the blinding quality is emblematic of Larkin’s utter disdain for the consumer culture of the 1950s as he notes that people have become blinded by their utter greed and overconsumption and fail to see the reality of people suffering in poverty.
Essential Beauty stanza 2 quotes
- ‘rise serenely to proclaim pure crust, pure foam’ evokes an image of grace and genteel manners. The repetition of ‘pure’ acts as a sort of reaffirming of the perfect state of society that advertisements tried to push. The billboards themselves are personified, perhaps adopting the mannerisms of politicians of the post-war era who seemed naively unaware of the quality of life the average person was living & attempting to reassure the public that society could be rebuilt to a better standard.
- SF of death & decay:
‘dark raftered pubs…Granny Graveclothes’ tea…dying smokers’ = almost claustrophobic & oppressive sense of environment, the all consuming nature of this darkness and death emphasises the inescapability of reality, eventually we will all have to face death in some form. Also reflects the sheer decaying state that Britain was left in as a result of bombing during WW2 and the sense that death and mortality still loomed over the population. - ‘boy puking his heart out’ = violent, visceral physical rejection = symbolic of society’s rejection of imposed consumerism/advertisements. Extremely graphic imagery depicts the true, unsightly aspects of reality that cannot be easily screened over.
Self’s the man - use of pronouns
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
Self’s the Man stanzas 1, 2, 3, 4 quotes
- ‘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, the strict regulations of the relationship/marriage dynamic are reinforced through the tight AABB rhyme scheme which evokes a sense of the monotonous drudgery of life.
- ‘the money he gets for wasting his life on work/she takes as her perk’ - sympathy devt. for Arnold as he is trapped in a cycle of work. cynical language used to give voice to the frustrations of the male within this marital dynamic. This villainises the wife as through her husband’s view she is exploitative, using the relationship to her own financial advantage, ‘perk’ does imply that there is a sense of a transactional relationship here as the wife is entirely dependent on her husband, a figure of male authority, to gain purchasing power.
- ‘pay for the kiddies clobber…the drier…the electric fire’ triadic list of expenses = wasteful spending on inessentials, perhaps reflecting how the pursuit of consumerism is essentially meaningless/a waste of money. Feminist angle = contrasts the ‘perk’ as there is no mention of the wife buying herself anything.
- ‘Put a screw in this wall/he has no time at all’ = imperatives, demanding, incessant. AO3: Andy Capp & the Henpecked husband stereotype as Arnold believes that he is constantly harassed by his wife & has no time to relax bc marriage has removed his freedom.
- ‘the nippers to wheel round…and the hall to paint…and that letter to her mother’ constant use of ‘and’ allows an extension of this list of chores which become endless. Women become a burden to Arnold as not only is he ‘trapped’ in his marriage but he is to an extent dominated by women, especially his mother in law.
AO3: The domineering mother-in-law trope in comedy often saw ‘mothers-in-law’ depicted as exceptionally bossy and wrongfully dictating to a man.
Self’s the Man - Stanzas 5,6,7,8 quotes
- ‘playing his own game’ vs.’Im a better hand’ = the metaphor of gambling is used as a way to critique the pursuit of marriage. Gambling metaphor suggests that by marrying, Arnold has played into the social expectations of marriage and recognises the need to marry as a means of conformity.
The speaker’s own assertion that ‘I’m a better hand’ = recognition of how to play the system, assuming a sense of superiority as they recognise that they haven’t condemned themselves to this life of pressure and dissatisfaction.
Fem. perspective: ‘own game’ suggests that life, and this marriage, have been constructed under Arnold’s rules, it is Arnold who is in utter control.
Ambulances stanzas 1 & 2 key quotes
- ‘Closed like confessionals’ - religious simile = a reconciliation of sin through death. Sacred space, offers privacy and a sense of intimacy and dignity in death.
‘Closed’ = utter finality of death, unable to ‘enter’ through the doors of life again i.e. reanimate as they have crossed over this threshold. - ‘They come to rest at any kerb/all streets in time are visited’ evocative of the pervading sense of death that is ever-present within life, it is an inescapable fact of existence as ‘any’ and ‘all’ reinforce the idea that we all must come face to face with death at some point, a lamentation in the indiscriminatory quality of death.
- ‘Wild white face overtops red stretcher blankets’ - the alliterative ‘w’ sounds create a tremulous quality, perhaps emulating a fear of death. ‘Wild white’ = ghostly, drained of vitality. Perhaps the whiteness reflects the bleakness of the concept of death itself or perhaps a newfound peace and tranquillity in death.
Ambulances Stanza 3,4,5,6
Fill in these quotes & analyse.
1. ‘sense the…….that…all we do…’
- ‘So…and…and..’
- ‘sudden…loss’
- ‘Dulls…all we are’
- ‘sense the solving emptiness that lies under all we do’ = Exposing the universal nature of both life and death, We are all born, and therefore must die. Metaphor of emptiness being a living being in our lives, it hovers under all of our actions, joys and memories. Larkin presents a cynical view on life’s purpose and the true contentment we receive, for there is an ‘emptiness’ that none of us can escape.
- ‘So permanent and blank and true’ SF of enlightenment as death is reimagined as more than just a finality of physical existence but as a sweet release from life and a comfort as it’s blank nature acts as a way out of life’s complexities and turmoil.
- ‘sudden shut of loss’ -sibilance stresses the ironically shocking nature of death as despite the fact that death is a fact of life, and something we are acutely aware will happen to us all, it is still frightening when it occurs, precisely because people are so caught up in their everyday that they forget about the reality of existence - it must come to an end.
- ‘dulls to distance all we are’: receding sound of the ambulance sirens as it carries the dead body with it. In this tender and raw moment of death, the only reminder of our preservation of life is this blaring siren. Death depicted as a fleeting incident which is soon forgotten about in the vast expanse of everyday life, yet it still has the potential to interrupt daily going-ons through its ‘blaring siren’ effect. Ambulances carry the physical, tangible reminders of our existences, but not our memories and souls.
Study of Reading Habits - growth of violence/desire to inflict violence
Stanza 1: a desire to use violence as a means to overcome bullying - masculine bravado
- ‘deal out the old right hook/ to dirty dogs twice my size’ = assumes a masculine persona through the imagined use of violence, gives him a form of empowerment.
Stanza 2: this desire to inflict physical harm evolves into a vicious desire to brutalise them female.
- ‘my cloak and fangs/Had ripping times in the dark’.: ripping = connotations of joy through the colloquial term of a ‘ripping yarn’ thereby trivialising violence against women as something for men to delight in.
‘the women I clubbed with sex’ = incapacitates women for his own pleasure. Sex morphs into a violent act and a way to overpower the woman => gives him a feeling of utter control and superiority.
‘I broke them up like meringues’: simile depicts women as fragile and delicate delicacies prone to dissolving easily. ‘broke them up’ suggests a complete shattering and fragmenting of the female’s physical body. ALTERNATIVELY could depict the persona’s fracturing of stereotypes of women as meek and docile, does he use sex and sexuality as a means of liberating women from restrictive stereotypes concerning their sexual purity.
RHYME: ‘fangs’ & ‘meringues’ depict an undercurrent of sexual frustration.
A study of reading habits - immersion and escapism that reading provides vs its lack of effect in masking reality in later life
‘my nose in a book…worth ruining my eyes’ & ‘me and my cloak and fangs’ use of physical, bodily language allows the speaker to almost ‘dismember’ himself, deconstructing his physical, earthly body to allow full immersion into the books/fantasy. The speaker then literally begins to assume the physical attributes of the characters, exemplifying his utter desire for escapism as he transforms his physical appearance.
VS
‘Don’t read much now’ = utterly dismissive and almost petulant in the rejection of books and literature. Establishes a sense of dissatisfaction with literature as a transportive device.
‘the dude who lets the girl down….the chap whose yellow…seem far to familiar now’ = colloquial lang. allows the speaker to adopt a demeaning tone as he demonstrates a distaste for the commonality of life. The whimsical aspect of literature is lost with age as his maturity provides him with a recognition of the ills or rather the dullness of life.
What is notable about the rhyme scheme in Ambulances?
The first and last lines of each stanza rhyme with eachother, this perhaps plays into the idea of death as a natural component of earthly existence, a feature of the circle of life itself. i.e. ‘they thread/all streets in times are visited’ = the continuous journey of the ambulance, as a metaphor for death, is exemplified.
Dockery and son = use of physical surroundings/natural environment to explore social pressures.
- ‘I try the door of where I used to live: Locked.’ = This threshold imagery suggests an inability to progress or return to a previous state. He has reached a new stage in life and can now no longer enjoy the childish endeavours he used to pursue as he has to face new social pressures, namely the expectation of bearing a son.
- ‘The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide’ = vast, alluring expanse with gleaming, precious connotations of ‘dazzlingly’. Perhaps indicative of the great potential for knowledge & life itself outside of the boundaries of school.
‘dazzlingly’ = almost blinding, perhaps reflecting how people can become blinded by their vociferous desire to pursue social expectations, losing their own desires in the process.
- ‘walked along the platform to its end’ furthers this boundary/threshold image as once again an ‘ending’ of a forged path occurs? This forces the speaker to choose his own path in life, potentially by walking this prescribed, man-made path/track, this is the speaker’s attempt to strive to meet society’s desires, yet he is now able to make his own decisions and pursue a different pathway.
- ‘Unhindered moon’ = depicts the natural, planetary world as experiencing freedom from the socially imposed restraints society enforces. Creates a sense of jealousy as the speaker seems to admire or even envy the sheer freedom of the moon which still holds purpose and value within everyday life. = perhaps the speaker aspires to be like the moon in the sense that they wish to cast off social expectations yet maintain a purpose w/in society = this is Larkin positing the view that there is still purpose and value to be found in a life that doesn’t abide by prescriptive roles and expectations.
Dockery and son = motif of mathematics
‘convinced…he should be added to’ mathematics used as a metaphor for reproduction and the depiction of male lineage as an almost ‘logical’ ideal to achieve in life.
‘why did he think adding meant increase?/To me it was dilution’ = ‘dilution’ evokes an image of watering down the strength of the pure form of an item. Implication that this dilution through lineage and producing a son acts as a gradual reduction of character, eroding a person’s personality through fatherhood.
Mr Bleaney - social isolation & deterioration
- ‘Flowered curtains, thin and frayed’ = deteriorating domestic setting, suggests a lack of vitality and sustenance and that these ‘curtains’ have been worn down over time, perhaps by the pressures of life? ‘Flowery’ suggests a more feminine possession , indicating that these curtains are infact a ‘hand-me-down’ from eth landlady herself. notably Mr Bleaney appears to have NO possessions of his own, an idea continually explored.
- ‘Bed, upright, chair, sixty watt bulb…,no room for books or bags’ - continuous ‘list’ reinforces this utter lack of physical space despite the incredibly sparse appearance of this habitation, the claustrophobia is reinforced by the plosive alliteration . ‘no books or bags’ = depiction of an utter absence of personal belongings, crafting quote a bleak image as Bleaney seems to have no purchasing power - perhaps a result of his unemployment? Books also point to teh presence of an intellectual mind, yet the utter absence of such implies that Mr Bleaney himself is not an articulate or intelligent man b he does not ‘invest’ his wages properly - seemingly reinforcing Larkin’s distaste for the working class and the unemployed who he viewed as inherently lazy.
AO3/5: Larkin said the cure to unemployment would be to slash unemployment benefits.
- ‘stood and watch the frigid wind…lay on the fusty bed’ = utter lack of mobility as ‘stood…watch…lay’ suggest a sort of passiveness and a detachment from engagement in life, Mr Bleaney quite literally watches the world go by . = Stasis & static life implies an inability to truly derive joy from life without truly engaging with others, metaphorically represents the lack of social mobility for the downtrodden working class.
‘frigid wind’ = perhaps emblematic of his social rejection by a cruel, unaccepting society which deems him worthless & confining him to this space of relative squalor: ‘fusty bed’.
