The Recurring Theme of Death in the Poetry of Philip Larkin.

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The Recurring Theme of Death in the Poetry of Philip Larkin.

In reading the poetry of Philip Larkin for the first time, one is

struck by the characteristically glum atmosphere that pervades most of

his poems. The vast majority of his verse is devoted to what is

generally taken to be negative aspects of life, such as loneliness and

dejection, disappointments, loss, and the terrifying prospect of

impending death. Evidently, there are uplifting and humorous sides to

his work as well, but for certain reasons Larkin is invariably

identified with a downhearted, pessimistic temper and tone of voice,

conveying a constant sense of failure and of disappointment that

underlies all the more specific emotions and reflections of individual

poems.

Frequently, Larkin is just sad, and one is amazed then at the wide

range of things and events, from money ('Money': 'I listen to money

singing It is intensely sad.' (198)), to a delayed plane

('Autobiography at an Air-Station', where the person obviously had

hoped to leave before sunset, but cannot, because his machine is

several hours delayed. When he says: 'I set So much on this

Assumption. Now it's failed' (78), this response would appear a little

oversensitive, did not the title indicate that something more is being

dealt with here than just an afternoon at the airport), that can

depress him.

Larkin can be violently energetic as well, and so deep is his

embitterment at times that he believes himself to be maliciously

tricked out of something he had originally been entitled to - although

he is very vague about who or what it was that cheated him, or the

nature of his initial hopes. An illustrative case in point is the

title of his second substantial volume of verse, ...

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...is no sense of human contact and interaction, or

want of it.

For Larkin, a sense of loss seems to be inevitable as life goes on,

and his fatalistic - and somewhat bewildering - contention is that the

course of one's life is essentially independent of one's actions.

However, Larkin does not explicitly point the finger at one person,

group or institution, although he comments on parents, society and

love as being flawed in other poems. Larkin's message of his poetry,

coupled with the recurring theme of death, is that things just happen

to be the way they are, without anyone particularly wanting them to be

so - a conclusion that furthermore is very much in line with Larkin's

fatalistic frame of mind.

WORKS CITED

1 Larkin history found on www.philiplarkin.com (Philip Larkin Society)

2 Larkin, Philip. Collected Poems. London: The Marvell Press, 1988.

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