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

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, ... ...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.