The Less Deceived

Born Yesterday

Beautiful imagery of flowers and nature

Transience of happiness

Satirical approach to society’s expectations

Suggests parents have an idealistic view of their children and their potential

Next, Please

Uniform, repetitive rhyme structure

Pronouns - including himself in criticisms

Extended metaphor and imagery of ship

Larkin’s fear of death, Anglican Agnostic

Wants

Anaphora - stiff formality, mechanical nature of life

Theme of suppression, death, avoidance

Larkin’s avoidance of limelight and social interaction

Suggests it’s part of the human condition

World-weary but not specific to him necessarily

Poetry of Departures

Disciplined society, sense of conformity, importance of family unit, judgement of society

Cyclical inescapability, merely repeating the same pattern

Discussion of collective experiences

Arrivals, Departures

Setting evocative of industrial urban town, impermanent location, constantly moving

Sensory imagery to demonstrate the noises of the ships

Travelling salesmen - alliteration reinforces relentlessness

The Movement - poetry about real life

Imperatives and direct speech

Toads

ABAB rhyme scheme but many half-rhymes - unconvincing argument as he himself is unconvinced

Desire to escape this disciplined society

Larkin worked as a librarian for 20 years - conformist

Extended metaphor for work - ugly and poisonous

Sibilance and alliteration emphasises oppression

Poetry of Departures

Whatever Happened?

Theme of memory

Title demonstrates uncertainty, questioning

Remembers images as static, depersonalisation

Post-WWII, many people dealt with trauma/traumatic events

Reassurance of society, meaningless phrases, attempts at reassurance

Rhyming couplet at the end typically draws ideas together but the questions make it jarring, rhyme lingers, mirroring the memory

Age

Larkin self-conscious of his legacy, detached observer

Clouds - have physical presence but are intangible, like age

Game - reflects societal expectations and obligations

Link to Wants

Larkin’s struggle with expectations of marriage and children

Triple Time

Split into three stanzas - present, future and past

Changing tones for each stanza but still linked

Link to Next, Please

Larkin doesn’t want the audience to be deceived

Rhyme of ‘scoured’ and ‘soured’ highlights disdain

Skin

Inevitability of death as he discusses the fragility of life

Speaker not active in aging - passive voice

Half-rhyme

Use of lists throughout

Enjambment adds to lack of control

Extended metaphor of skin addressed as a separate entity - speaker isn’t connected to it

Modal verbs convey the inevitability of aging

Church Going

Strict meter, iambic pentameter

Increasing secularisation, Larkin as Anglican agnostic, ostensibly dismissive towards religion

Natural imagery when discussing the future

Use of list - shows how much there is to absorb, builds up to the silence