Toads Flashcards
What is the main theme in Toads?
Work
What structure is used?
Half rhyme and a regular rhyme scheme which could embody his contrasting viewpoints
What device is used in the title?
Extended metaphor as work is a pest/unpleasant/unwanted
What device is used in ‘Six days of the week it soils/ With its sickening poision’?
Sibiliance to show how work impedes on your health
What device is used in ‘Lecturers/ lispers/ Losers, loblolly men, louts’?
He mocks those via alliterative listing. In a way he resents them as they don’t work very hard but is also jealous
What device is used in ‘Their unspeakable wives/ Are skinny as whippets’?
Simile - dehumanises and mocks those that don’t work. Although narrator resents restrictions he also looks down on those that don’t work
What device is used in ‘that’s the stuff/That dreams are made on’?
Intertextual reference to the Tempest - philosophical lines spoke by a magician who dreams of a utopian world so speaker is mocking the notion of a perfect society. Perhaps speaker trying to show off his well read knowledge
What device is used in ‘The fame and the girl and the money’?
Polysyndenton/tricolon - mocks such generic and superficial ambitions. Rejects American Dream and cliched dreams
What did Larkin work as?
Chief Librarian at the Uni of Hull for around 30 years expanding its library 6 times larger than it was originally
What position did he reject?
The prestigious poet laureate
What was happening in the 50s?
Food rationing was still in place until 1954 and Labour came into power promising a more fair, equal Britain
