The Whitsun Weddings - Key Quotes

‘Push through plate-glass swing doors to their desires’

Here, begins on throchee, urgency, materialistic

‘cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies, /Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers-’

Here, asyndetic long list, compulsive, consumerism

‘A cut-price crowd, urban yet simple’

Here, harsh alliteration, snobbish

‘Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands /Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, /Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, /Luminously-peopled air ascends;’

Here, caesuras create pauses and reflects the end of the journey and the train stopping, personification, simile, the beauty of the unseen, ambiguous, natural creatures or heavenly place or irony as there are no people here

‘Here is unfenced existence: /Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.’

Here, peace in death, freedom from society, sense of new beginning, peaceful people free area, untouched by humanity

4 octets, roughly iambic pentameter, ababcdcd, enjambment

Here, enjambment reflects the train journey

‘Flowered curtains, thin and frayed, /Fall to within five inches of the sill,’

Mr Bleaney, outdated room

‘Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook /Behind the door, no room for books or bags /’I’ll take it.’’

Mr Bleaney, plain description of his dull room, minimal speech from speaker

‘That how we live measures our own nature, /And at his age having no more to show /Than one hired box should make him pretty sure /He warranted no better, I don’t know.’

Mr Bleaney, deflecting from his own problems, not sure is Mr Bleaney thought the same or if he is getting his life, you are how you live, enjambment followed by anti-climatic end stopped line

abab, 4 line stanzas

Mr Bleaney, suggests a mundane routine

‘For nations vague as weed’

Nothing to Be Said, simile, unwanted, unknown countries that he doesn’t know about, Larkin don’t like to travel

‘In mill-towns on dark mornings /Life is slow dying.’

Nothing to Be Said, mills support life, juxtaposition, Industrial Revolution kills the old ways of life for the working class as well as generally, pain, typical of Larkin

‘Hours giving evidence /Or birth, advance /On death equally slowly.’

Nothing to Be Said, suggests that laws don’t matter in death, everyone is equal in death no matter wealth or religion or race or gender etc., all human endeavour is the same

‘And saying so to some //means nothing; others it leaves /Nothing to be said.’

Nothing to Be Said, nothing else needs to be said about death, bleak vision of life

3 stanzas, free verse

Nothing to Be Said, 3 stages of life, not typical of Larkin

‘One bleached from lying in a sunny place, /One marked in circles by a vase of water, /One mended, when a tidy had seized her,’

Love Songs In Age, anaphora, marked by time, glimpses of family life, negative verbs

‘Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein /That hidden freshness, sung /That certainty of time laid up in store /As when she played them first.’

Love Songs In Age, sense of youth and renewal that comes with spring, suggests that youth has lain dormant, promises hope, life a fruitful harvest, connects her with her younger self and the romantic feelings that she felt

‘Broke out, to show /Its bright incipience sailing above, /Still promising to solve, and satisfy, /And set unchangeably in order.’

Love Songs In Age, begins with 2 stresses to reflect the energy of reliving, alliteration of strong ‘B’ sounds have a sense of energy, sibilance, tree image continues, new blossom, enjambment conveys the spread of new growth

‘So, /To pile them back, to cry, /Was hard, without lamely admitting how /It had not done so then, and could not now.’

Love Songs In Ages, reality does not live up to fantasies so she puts the books away, unfulfilled dreams, can’t relive the past, doesn’t want to admit it, enjambment followed by an end stopped line like a dying fall

3 octets, abacbcdd, mostly iambic pentameter but lines 2 and 6 in each stanza are mainly iambic triameter

Love Songs In Age, rhyming couplet at the end creates a sense of closure, song like rhythm, aims feels like a heartbeat

‘Crowds, colourless and careworn /Had made my taxi late,’

Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses, wearing black, snobbish tone

‘Still act their solemn-sinister /Wreath-rubbish in Whitehall’

Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses, cynical view on Remembrance Day traditions, more cynical than Larkin

‘It used to make me throw up, /These mawkish, nursery games: /O When will England grow up?’

Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses, describing the ceremony as childish, he might have the view that there is no point remembering the dead, some WW1 poets were worried that honouring the dead promotes warfare

‘- But I out soar the Thames’

Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses, above them and the struggles, snobbish

Larkin adopts a persona of a jet set high flying academic, satire, jaunty tone and song like rhythm

Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses, Larkin makes fun of them and maybe envy them, Larkin’s view here is ambiguous, exciting life, satirising academics travelling

‘Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces’

Broadcast, personification, suggests oppressive environment

‘I think of your face among all those faces’

Broadcast, direct address to his girlfriend Maeve, trying to imagine her there

‘I lose /All but the outline of the still and withering /Leaves on half emptied trees.’

Broadcast, looking out of the window, autumn of life, middle age

‘rabid storms of chording’

Broadcast, frenzied madness

‘By being distant over power my mind /All the more shamelessly, their cut-off shout /Leaving me desperate to pick out /Your hands, tiny in all that air, applauding.’

Broadcast, he is getting caught up in the music, personification, romantic, trying to connect to her, air in the auditorium and where the radio waves are, Larkin feels isolated at the end

‘Upright in timeless glasses, silver hair, /Dark suit, white collar.’

Faith Healing, morally upright, double meaning, asyndetic list, professional attire, all the preachers are the same, con men, false promises

‘warm spring rain’

Faith Healing, nature metaphor, capturing the women’s hope for renewal

‘some /Sheepishly stray, not back into their lives /Just yet’

Faith Healing, follow blindly, embarrassed, biblical, like a herd, they don’t want to go back to reality

‘To some it means the difference they could make /By loving others, but across most it sweeps /As all they might have done had they been loved. /That nothing cures.’

Faith Healing, does not heal their romantic disappointment, self-centred happiness, monosyllabic line conveys truth, caesura emphasis the short sentence and sounds final

‘An immense slackening ache, /As when, throwing, the rigid landscape weeps, /Spreads slowly through them - that, and the voice above /Saying Dear child, and all time has disproved.’

Faith healing, suggests gradual healing, came for healing but leaves aching, voice of god or preacher, human voice but god like figure, simile suggests spring after a rigid winter and a painful epiphany, personifies the landscape, time brings disillusion, perhaps implies that any sense of being healed is short lived

‘That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes /Like New Orleans reflected on the water, /And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes, /Building for some a legendary Quarter /Of balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles, /Everyone making love and going share—’

For Sidney Bechet, apostrophe to address Bechet, note has sustained intensity, vibrato, the listener creates an image of New Orleans in their head, romantic and easy going image, asyndetic list

‘Sporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced /Far above rubies) to pretend their fads, /While scholars manques nod around unnoticed.’

For Sidney Bechet, sexual fantasies, wild creatures, biblical reference with the rubies, ironic, prostitutes complying with weird fetishes, making fun with people obsessed with jazz music

‘On me your voice falls as they say love should, /Like an enormous yes.’

For Sidney Bechet, sounds like a religious experience, modal verb suggests that Larkin has never felt real love, simile, caesura creates a pause

random rhyming scheme, ‘I can live a week without poetry, not a day without jazz.’

reflects jazz music, quote from Philip Larkin

‘Shaped. to the comfort of the last to go /As if to win them back’

Home is so Sad, trying to please or impress the people

‘Having no heart to put aside the theft’

Home is so Sad, the owners have been stolen from the house, maybe they died

‘A joyous shot at how things out to be, /Long fallen wide.’

Home is so Sad, false promises

‘You can see how it was: /Look at the pitures and the cutlery. /The music in the piano stool. That vase.’

Home is so Sad, vague description, caesura throws emphasis, the vase has sentimental meaning

extended personification, ababa, roughly iambic pentameter

Home is so Sad, the home has feelings, nostalgic feel

‘Walking around in the park /Should feel better than work: /The lake, the sunshine, The grass to lie on,’

Toads Revisited, he enjoys work more than the park, modal verb to show how it isn’t for him, bland description, doesn’t affect him

‘Not a bad place to be. /Yet it doesn’t suit me.’

Toads Revisited, aware of his view, end stopped lines, definitive

‘All dodging the toad work /By being stupid or weak. /Think of being them!’

Toads Revisited, Larkin looks down on ill people, right wing views, unfair, he’d rather work than be like them, cynical

‘Give me your arm, old toad; /Help me down Cemetery Road.’

Toads Revisited, jaunty image, making friends with the toad, ends on image of death

extended metaphor, rhyming couplets, refers to Toads a poem from Larkin’s previous collection

Toads Revisited, shows work as a toad, conventions and reflects boring routine

‘I should make use of water. /Going to church /Would entail a fording /To dry, different clothes;’

Water, like baptism, purification process, crossing water to get to the church

‘A furious devout drench’

Water, like the flood and Noah’s Arch, religious image with water

‘And I should raise in the east /A glass of water /Where any-angled light /Would congregate endlessly.’

Water, parallel to sun rising in the East, everyday thing becoming profound, refraction shows change or is infinite, light will never end like a god, spiritual, ends on an uplifting image, the light is cleansing the water and brightening it

‘girls /In parodies of fashion, feels and veils, /All posed irresolutely’

The Whitsun Weddings, trying to find a husband, working class, trying to look more glamorous, not quite sure of themselves and their futures

‘The fathers with broad belts under their suits /And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat; /An uncle shouting smut’

The Whitsun Weddings, stereotypical characters, negative to working class and women

‘and then the perms, /The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes, lessons, mauves, and olive-ochres’

The Whitsun Weddings, bright colours that are fake, natural but artificial

‘The women shared /The secret like a happy funeral’

The Whitsun Weddings, death of self, simile, marriage is harder for women, letting go of the daughters, oxymoron

‘While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared /At a religious wounding’

The Whitsun Weddings, biblical reference, sacrifice, fear of marrying, women loosing their virginities on their wedding nights

‘There we were aimed. And as we raced across /Bright knots of rail /Past standing Pullmas, walls of blackened moss /Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail Travelling coincidence; and what it held /Stood ready to be loosed with all the power /That being changes can give.’

The Whitsun Weddings, extended metaphor of the train being a bow aimed at the future, train lines and the married couples lives are aimed in a direction, ominous, reality getting close to them, changed by Wedding night

‘We slowed again, / And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled /A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower /Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.’

The Whitsun Weddings, extended metaphor of the train being a bow aimed at the future, cupid image, uncertainty in the future, somewhere else a marriage is falling apart, new life, battle image, death of their old life, rain is needed to create life, rain is needed to create life, rain on your wedding day is considered lucky sometimes

‘That Arnold is less selfish than I.’

Self’s the Man, end stopped line, definitive, repetition

‘And the money he gets for wasting his life on work /She takes as her perk’, ‘Put a screw in this wall /He has no time at all’

Self’s the Man, negative description of marriage and women, wife has a nagging tone

‘‘Is there such a contrast? /He was out for his own ends’

Self’s the Man, rhetorical question, makes the reader think, they both do things for himself, he compares himself to other men

‘Only I’m a better hand /At knowing what I can stand /Without them sending a van - /Or I suppose I can.’

Self’s the Man, extended metaphor, like a card game, van to a psych ward, uncertainty, he could go mad without marrying

aabb, irregular metre, metre gets more regular as the poem goes on

Self’s the Man, rhyming scheme reflects Arnold’s dull and repetitive life, metre reflects Larkin’s free life or the chaos is Arnold’s life

‘On shallow straw, in shadeless glass, /Huddled by empty bowls, they sleep: /No darl, no dam, no earth, no grass’

Take One Home for the Kiddies, neglected pet shop, negative anaphora

‘Mam, get us one of them to keep.’, ‘Mam, we’re playing funerals now.’

Take One Home for the Kiddies, repetition, blames the mother, the child only plays with it for a bit and it dies, false hope

‘Living toys are something novel’

Take One Home for the Kiddies, objectifies the animals, treating them like toys, materialism

title is in the voice of the seller

Take One Home for the Kiddies

‘What are days for?’, ‘Where can we live but days?’

Days, questioning tone, he answers his questions

‘Days are where we live. /They come, they wake us /Time and time over. They are to be happy in:’

Days, personifies days

‘Ah, solving that question /Brings the priest and the doctor /In their long coats /Running over the fields.’

Days, conversion of religion and science, they want the answer even if it is impossible, surreal and comical image, undignified and farcical, they are meant to be authority figure, running to a dead body maybe, war like, maybe heaven or Elysian Fields

‘Those long uneven lines /Standing as patiently /As if they were stretched outside /The Oval or Villa Park,’

MCMXIV, simile, like they are waiting to see a sports game, semantic field of a holiday, last happy moment for 4 years, they are unaware of how they will die

‘The crowns of hats, the sun /On moustached archaicfaces’

MCMXIV, part of a hat, double meaning, patriotic working class people feeling like royalty, faces of the lost generation, feels more distant

‘And dark-clothed children at play /Called after kings and queens’

MCMXIV, black and white footage juxtaposition funeral image, represents working class, patriotic, perhaps a metaphor for the soldiers being like naive children

‘And the countryside not caring /The place-names all hazed over /With flowering grasses, and fields /Shadowing Domesday lines /Under wheats’ restless silence; /The differently-dressed servants /With tiny rooms in huge houses, /The dust behind limousines;’

MCMXIV, stuck in time like England is in a trance, personification, the middle/upper classes did not go to war as much, carelessness in the upper class, foreshadowing, nothing here has changed since the Domesday Book was written, traditional, like doom, restlessness under tranquility, big decisions made in stately homes, ashes and dust, funeral image

‘Never such innocence /Never before or since /As changed itself to past /Without a word—the men /Leaving the gardens tidy, /The thousands of marriages /Lasting a little while longer: /Never such innocence again.’

MCMXIV, rapid change in innocence in the world, no other generation will go odd to war naively, like a conscious decision even though they are oblivious, people go along with it blindly, civilised society, people know now, we have lost an innocent world but we are aware now

4 octets, a rhyme every 4 lines

MCMXIV, chaos and order

‘Lying together there goes back so far, /An emblem of two people being honest. /Yet more and more time passes silently.’

Talking In Bed, intimate, like a tradition, symbol of easiness, romantic promise, struggle to communicate

‘Outside, the wind’s incomplete unrest /Builds and disperses clouds in the sky, /And dark towns heap up on the horizon. /None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why’

Talking In Bed, a storm is coming, personification, pathetic fallacy, foreboding, no god, humans are uncared for

‘At this unique distance from isolation /It becomes still more difficult to find /Words at once true and kind, /Or not untrue and not unkind

Talking In Bed, together but alone,stuggling to find words, implies that they want to be rude to each other, toxic relationship

tercets, aba for first 3 stanza, aaa on last stanza

Talking In Bed, rhyming triplet at the end shows confinement and has a sense of strain

‘selling cheap clothes /Set out in simple sizes plainly /(Knitwear, Summer Casuals, Hose, In browns and greys, maroon and navy)

The Large Cool Store, everyday clothes, asyndetic list, dull and dark colours

‘Conjures the weekday world of those /Who leave at dawn low terraced houses /Timed for the factory, yard and site.’

The Large Cool Store, the clothes make him think of working/lower class people going to work

‘Spread the stands of Modes For Night. /Machine embroidered, thin as blouses,’

The Large Cool Store, growing in popularity, consumerism, he is intrigued boy this, mass produced

‘Lemon, sapphire, moss-green, rose /Bri-Nylon Baby Dolls and Shorties /Flounce in clusters.’

The Large Cool Store, asyndetic list, bright colours, contrast to other clothes, the colours are objects, desirable and natural, making girls look younger, delicate, personification

‘How separate and unearthly love is, /Or women are, or what they do, /Or in our young unreal wishes’

The Large Cool Store, sexism, he doesn’t understand how women both work and have a love life, critical of male fantasies

‘Synthetic, new, /And nature less in ecstasies.’

The Large Cool Store, working class is artificial, love is being created through this consumerism, contrast to colours, nature is being removed from love, male fantasies are shown in this consumerism

‘To know I could still keep cool, /And deal out the old right hook /To dirty dogs twice my size.’

A Study of Reading Habits, the books he read as a child had heroes defeating bad guys

‘Evil was just my lark /Me and my cloak and fangs /Had ripping times in the dark. /The women I clubbed with sex! /I broke them up like meringues.’

A Study of Reading Habits, he enjoyed evil as a teenager, young women are often the victims in vampire books, as he gets older he reader darker and more sexual books, meringues crumble easily

‘the dude /Who lets the girl down before /The hero arrives, the chap /Who’s yellow and keeps the store /Seem too familiar. Get stewed: /Books are a loads of crap.’

A Study of Reading Habits, he now compares himself to lesser characters, he feels left down by the books, colloquial language, irony as he is a librarian

mainly iambic trimeter, abcbac

A Study of Reading Habits, child like, simple rhymes

‘striking the basket, skidding across the floor’

As Bad as a Mile, just misses, symbol of human failure

‘Of failure spreading back up the arm /Earlier and earlier, the upraised hand calm, /The apple unbitten in the palm.’

As Bad as a Mile, small moment of failure reaching back to the first sin and failure, back to Eve failing God, calm before temptation, takes you back to before failure, he wants another go at throwing, the apple represents the choice to sin

title refers to the phrases ‘an inch is as bad as a mile’, 2 short stanzas, aaa

As Bad as a Mile

‘Closed like confessionals’

Ambulances, simile, everyone knows what is going on despite hiding it, people on their final journey wanting to address their sins

‘Light glossy grey, /They come to rest at any kerb: /All streets in time are visited.’

Ambulances, like a gravestone, memorial like, the ambulance is coming to take someone to their death, everyone dies no matter their social class, personification

‘Then children strewn on steps or road, /Or women coming from the shops, /Past smells of dinners’

Ambulances, life stops for a moment

‘A wild white face that overtops /Red stretcher-blankets momently /As it is carried in and stowed’

Ambulances, contrast in colour, someone about to die, dehumanising pronoun, ‘stowed’ is normally used for an object or cargo

‘And the sense the solving emptiness /That lies under all we do,’

Ambulances, death solves philosophical questions, death is always there and might be closer than you think

‘The fastened doors recede, Poor soul, /They whisper at their own distress’

Ambulances, sense of being closed off