'Critical Analysis of Here by Philip Larkin\r'

'‘hither’ is a sprawling, moving and often majestic metrical composition that takes the lecturer on a strikingly optical trip by means of the countryside and the town, before finally completion up on the coast. Larkin uses long, flowing sentences which add a sense of continual trend; these sentences are generous of rich imagery and commentary which justy take back the reader in the poesy. The rime is titled ‘ personate’, yet in the start-off lead stanzas the song takes in various locations and never stands still; the reader questions where ‘ present’ is, whether or not it is actually a specific, physical location.\r\nIn ‘ present’, Larkin come ins to be slender of the urban population, finding to a greater extent than beauty and attract in the natural ground than the human world, demonstrate by the fact that human presence in the poesy is still temporary, fading away afterward the third gear stanza. The fi rst intelligence agency of the poem, ‘Swerving’, lends an immediate sense of physical movement to the poem. However, it is not the traditional, vehicular sort of movement; trains and cars do not swerve. The movement in ‘Here’ is immediately free and unrestrained, as the ‘rich industrial shadows’ are left bathroom.\r\nThis license of movement however, immediately short letters with the ‘traffic all nighttime north’, which momentarily stops the poem in its tracks, made clear by the following semi-colon which breaks up the line. However, the poem immediately starts up again, with the repetition of the word ‘ slew’ which reinforces the sense of free movement. Now, Larkin takes us through the ‘fields/too think and thistled to be called meadows’, before the poem is again interrupted by the becharm of the human world- the poem halts for the ‘Workmen at dawn’. Larkin indeed repeats ‘Swer ving’ for a third time.\r\nOn three distinct occasions the word is used; apiece time to the identical effect. By the end of the first stanza the reader finish be in no doubt that Larkin is taking them on a move. In the first stanza, and indeed in the whole poem, on that portend is a clear theme of the industrialized world interrupting the natural, rural world. Larkin presents a series of images; ‘skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hare and pheasants’ along with the meadows and ‘widening river’. These images are marred somewhat by the traffic and workmen, and ultimately the town which emerges in the siemens stanza. These nterruptions are summed up by Larkin as ‘harsh-named halts’.\r\nThe contrast between country and city, between rural and urban, is other key theme in the poem. The freedom of ‘ turn’ through the countryside in the first stanza is replaced by the claustrophobic cluster of ‘domes and statues, spire s and cranes’ which fill the large town. Even the water, which in the first stanza takes the form of a peaceful river, is ‘barge-crowded’ in the routine stanza, again demonstrating the often banish cultivate of man. To add to the contrast, Larkin lists elements of the town (domes and statues… in exactly the same manner as he lists elements of the countryside (skies and scarecrows… ).\r\nHere, the ‘piled gold clouds’ ease up been replaced with the slight appealing ‘grain-scattered streets’. Notably, the town is the first intimacy in the poem that is draw as ‘Here’, peradventure hinting at the location of the poem’s title. Another contrast between the rural and urban settings of the poem is the differing types of movement. In the first stanza, the poem moves freely, ‘swerving’. In the second stanza, everything is more rigid; the journey of the city-dwellers from the ‘raw estatesâ⠂¬â„¢ is described as ‘dead smashing’.\r\nAt this stage, Larkin is clearly critical not solo of the urban population, but of their consumerist culture. They are described negatively as a ‘cut-price crowd’ only interested in their superficial ‘desires’. Larkin presents us with another(prenominal) selection of images; this time of unneeded consumer goods. ‘Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers-’. The write at the end of this list indicates the extreme step of these goods, something which Larkin quietly despises. The first stanza contains definite elements of hope; it is dawn, the journey is taking us away from the negatively described ‘industrial shadows’.\r\nAlso, the stanza ends on a positive dividing line; ‘the piled gold clouds’ and ‘shining gull-marked mud’ are resplendent descriptions of natural scenes untouched by human influence. However, the second stanza retains none of this positivity; the reader is trapped behind the ‘plate-glass swing doors’ of consumerism. Throughout the poem Larkin’s descriptions tend to rely less on descriptive adjectives, which appear infrequently, and more on series of images relating to the place cosmos described.\r\nWhen descriptive adjectives are used, they are used to hopeful effect; the ‘luminously-peopled ambiance’ and the ‘piled- gold louds’, but the lists of different images are more frequent and leave more of an impression. In the third stanza, Larkin presents an almost entirely negative list of images that he associates with the town; in fact, individually list is almost a spontaneous word-association plot of background for Larkin. When Larkin looks at the town as a whole, the description is not too unfavourable, mainly focusing on the buildings, however when he goes further down and looks at the town on a more ad hominem level, the description is rather more cutti ng. The ‘fishy-smelling’ town is full of ‘tattoo-shops’ and consulates, and is only visited by ‘salesmen and relations’.\r\nWith the latter point, Larkin may well be pointing out that living in a city, surrounded by houses and shops and people doesn’t guarantee fulfilment and fitting in; you can still be obscure whilst living in a town. Another point is that the edges of the town are described as ‘half-built edges’- the building is still in progress and the town is clearly expanding, possibly indefinitely. Larkin touches on the idea of loneliness again between the third and fourth stanzas. Here he describes how out in the countryside, beyond the realm of the city, the wheat-fields ‘Isolate villages, where removed lives/ desolation clarifies. This full stop is the first in the poem; the three stanza sentence ends here, out in the obscure countryside. However, it is clear that the loneliness experienced in the isolate d villages is not the same as that experienced in the towns. In the countryside, Larkin suggests that the loneliness and the isolation ‘clarifies’ your life; perhaps he means that, free from the consumerist ‘desires’ and ‘tattoo-shops’ life is less cluttered and busy, and somewhat perversely, less lonely, in bruise of the physical isolation.\r\nThe ending of the first sentence suggests that the poem’s journey is over, that we have finally arrived at Larkin’s location, ‘Here’. Here, there are no people; human influence is entirely heedless from the final stanza. Instead, Larkin presents an image of intense natural beauty, where ‘ conceal weeds flower, neglected waters quicken/Luminously-peopled air ascends. ’ It’s an interesting idea that beauty is present where we aren’t looking, that it can be right in front of us and still go unnoticed.\r\nThe poem comes to a rather sudden halt when the land suddenly ends at the ‘beach of shapes and shingle’. Larkin past states ‘Here is unenclosed existence’. It is possible that he is referring to the beach, the coast and the sea, that freedom can only actually be found there, but by this point in the poem it appears more likely that ‘Here’ is less a physical location and more a state of mind. Once you arrive at the perfect mental state (‘Here’), ‘unfenced existence’ is finally possible.\r\n'