Whatever Happened

Question 1

What is the form used in Whatever Happened?

Answer 1

It is a sonnet

Question 2

What is the three-line interlocking rhyme scheme called that is used?

Answer 2

Terza rima

Question 3

Which poem describe the speaker’s attempts to rationalise and overcome an ambiguous trauma?

Answer 3

Whatever Happened?

Question 4

What is the significance of the tight rhyme scheme (terza rima) that is used?

Answer 4

It symbolises how the speaker tries to control and compartmentalise the trauma he has experienced. However, this rhyme scheme is eventually broken in the final two lines, representing how the painful memory cannot be repressed

Question 5

‘Perspective brings _______ we say’

Answer 5

significance

Question 6

What is the significance of the voice given to society? e.g. ‘perspective brings significance we say’

Answer 6

The quasi-philosophical language is intended to mock how we as a society try to rationalise and explain away the trauma we have experienced

Question 7

What is the significance of the narrator referring to the ‘latitude on a map’ and blaming what happened on ‘coastal bedding’?

Answer 7

The language shows a desire to reduce the trauma to something technical, rather than emotional

Question 8

‘Curses? The _______? Struggling?’

Answer 8

dark

Question 9

What is the significance of the questions at the end of Whatever Happened? ‘Curses? The dark? Struggling?’

Answer 9

The incomplete, incoherent questions create a jarring tone, suggesting the speaker is left anxious and uncertain

Question 10

‘Easily then (though ________)’

Answer 10

pale

Question 11

‘but find next day/All’s _______ distant’

Answer 11

Kodak

Question 12

What is the significance of the narrator referring to the memory as being ‘Kodak distant’?

Answer 12

It conveys how he wants to reduce the trauma to a photo - something that he can control and understand

Question 13

At the end of the poem, the moan character questions - ‘Where’s the source/Of these yarns now?’ - How might this have a double meaning?

Answer 13

Yarn can mean both a story and a type of thread. Therefore, Larkin suggests that the story of whatever happened, like unspooled thread, becomes tangled and difficult to make sense of

Question 14

What is the ambiguous trauma described supposedly based on?

Answer 14

Larkin’s affair with Patsy Strang, who was briefly pregnant with his child before suffering a miscarriage

Question 15

The motif photography in the poem could have been influenced by…?

Answer 15

Larkin’s own interests - he was a keen amateur photographer