No Road

Question 1

What device is used in the title ‘No Road’ ?

Answer 1

The extended metaphor is used to explore the ending of a relationship with a partner, and the implications that come with the separation.

Question 2

What themes are present?

Answer 2

Relationships, and times effect on it.

Question 3

What quote from Larkin links to the theme of time?

Answer 3

‘Time erodes, soils, disappoints’

Question 4

What device is used in between us/ Fall to disuse’ ?

Answer 4

Enjambment - emphatic of the separation between him and partner

Question 5

How is time seen in ‘bricked up our gates’ ?

Answer 5

Time is personified as slowly destructive and an undeniable force - time will triumph and force separation

Question 6

‘planted trees to screen us/ And turned all times eroding’

Answer 6

Listing the active measures that speaker and partner put in place to enforce seperation - subtle A03 - urbanising nature - Anti-Romantic.

Question 7

‘silence, and space, and strangers’

Answer 7

polysyndetic listing - seperation, agreed divide

Question 8

‘unmown/ No other change’

Answer 8

use of prefix linked to Thomas Hardy - and they are defined by stasis, what doesn’t happen not what does - neglect of relationship

Question 9

‘So clear it stands, so little overgrown’

Answer 9

anaphoric repetition - emphasising that the separation is recent. ‘stands’ - personification, sense of hope? feelings still present?

Question 10

‘And time would be stronger’

Answer 10

Time will make speaker stronger in the wake of separation

Question 11

‘Drafting a world where no such road will run / From you to me;’

Answer 11

Enjambment - continual, undeniable force of time, such an existence would be unnatural/lifeless

Question 12

‘times eroding agents’

Answer 12

Time as slow but inevitable force of change, the couple struggle to move on, time as an undeniable force

Question 13

‘From me to you’

Answer 13

Switch to singular pronouns from ‘us’, emphatic of increasing divide as the poem completes

Question 14

‘like a cold sun’

Answer 14

oxymoronic simile, shows mixed feelings, the relationship once brought warmth, no longer does, feeling is alien/distant/unpleasant

Question 15

‘Not to prevent it is my will’s fulfilment/ Willing it, my ailment’

Answer 15

Jumbled syntax on the final 3 lines. Caesura: unsure about his news of taking joy from being alone, freedom gained from being single, wanting solitude is his illness rather than the troubles of intimacy. Movement from full rhyme to half rhyme represents uncertainty. The lack of resolution links to the movement.

Question 16

What part of Larkin’s personal life can this poem be linked to?

Answer 16

Written in 1951 after he called off the engagement to Ruth Bowman.

Question 17

What does the consistent stanza length represent?

Answer 17

Could represent the speakers sturdy relationship s from relationship to solitude or perhaps more cynically, certainly there is an inevitable end.- sestets

Question 18

What could the rhyme scheme show?

Answer 18

The allusion of relationships being smooth, when they often meander off track. - ABABCC - undeniable movement of time/ time as a force