Places, Loved Ones Flashcards
What is the main theme?
Relationships/identity
What AO3 can be linked?
Literary movements, anti-modernist, poems often don’t have a clear resolution, Larkin’s longest relationship of almost 40 years to Monica Jones
What tone does this poem take?
Mocking/pessimisitic tone
What can be inferred through ‘No, I have never found/The place’?
Negator is responding to societal expectations as he entirely rejects cliched experiences, and the hyperbolic language shows he has been searching but is perhaps defeated/ is unachieved. Vague shows he is unable to speak with specificities because of his experiences
What device is used in ‘instant claim/On everything I own/ Down to my name’?
Legal language - marriage is transactional, takes his identity - form of restrictive contract
What can be inferred through ‘To find such seems to prove’?
Ownership/lack of trust. Generalising - restriction of freedom
What can be inferred in ‘You want no choice’?
‘You’ is the voice of broader society - speakers lack of autonomy by passively conforming
What does Larkin mock in ‘You ask them to bear/ You off irrevocably’?
Mocks how society believes that once you choose your person, its permanent. (nautical phrase meaning to change course away from the wind)
What device is used in ‘Should the town turn dreary’?
Plosive alliteration - emphasises that those who conform don’t take responsibility/accountability for their mistakes
What device is used in ‘Yet having missed them, you’re bound’?
The volta and the less personal pronoun shows speakers talking about himself as he wonders that if what you settle for is enough. ‘Bound’ shows a restriction as people are trapped in pretending to be happy for what they settled for
What can be inferred through the final line of ‘Your person, your place’?
Repetition is used to emphasise how the speaker feels as though he might have missed out. Melancholy tone as the speaker thinks he might have wanted it (love) if he could have found it.
What is the rhyme scheme?
Regular AB rhyme scheme
What device is used in ‘my proper ground’?
Pompous and somewhat cliched language showing the speaker to mock generic ideas of finding happiness through a person or a place
