Dockery and Son

Dockery and Son

'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'
Death-suited, visitant, I nod. 'And do
You keep in touch with-' Or remember how
Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight
We used to stand before that desk, to give
'Our version' of 'these incidents last night'?
I try the door of where I used to live:

Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.
A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored.
Canal and clouds and colleges subside
Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord,
Anyone up today must have been born
In '43, when I was twenty-one.
If he was younger, did he get this son
At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn

High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms
With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows
How much . . . How little . . . Yawning, I suppose
I fell asleep, waking at the fumes
And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed,
And ate an awful pie, and walked along
The platform to its end to see the ranged
Joining and parting lines reflect a strong

Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife,
No house or land still seemed quite natural.
Only a numbness registered the shock
Of finding out how much had gone of life,
How widely from the others. Dockery, now:
Only nineteen, he must have taken stock
Of what he wanted, and been capable
Of . . . No, that's not the difference: rather, how

Convinced he was he should be added to!
Why did he think adding meant increase?
To me it was dilution. Where do these
Innate assumptions come from? Not from what
We think truest, or most want to do:
Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They're more a style
Our lives bring with them: habit for a while,
Suddenly they harden into all we've got

And how we got it; looked back on, they rear
Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying
For Dockery a son, for me nothing,
Nothing with all a son's harsh patronage.
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.

From the beginning, there is a dull mood evoked through “death-suited”. It suggests that Larkin feels, himself, death just around the corner, shrouding him; or perhaps it is that Dockery has died, and that’s why Larkin has made the journey to his old university, that the “death-suit” is literally a suit for the dead.
Returning to Oxford, there is a sense of alienation and isolation. In the direct speech from the Dean, we hear that Dockery’s “son’s here now”, following the common tradition of Oxbridge alumni’s child to follow in their parents’ footsteps. It cuts the persona off immediately, who has ‘outgrown’ this place. He loses himself in the memories of how “half-tight” he’d once give his “‘version’ of ‘these events last night’”. Of course, the Dean’s words contrast now, in “do / You keep in touch with”.The enjambment, leading to stress on the word “locked” also evokes the sense of alienation – Larkin can no longer enter a place that was once “home”.  The ideas that have come from the meeting with the Dean are not so easy to leave behind. Larkin reflects upon Dockery, how he was “that withdrawn / High-collared public-schoolboy” – not someone to have sex, to produce a son. 

On the platform, Larkin sees that “the ranged / Joining and parting lines reflect a strong / Unhindered moon” before him – a visual metaphor for the different strains of existence that we can travel down. Dockery has one line, Larkin another, but for that brief moment in Oxford, their lines “joined”. A perfect summary of Larkin’s life to this point comes at the beginning of the fourth stanza :“To have no son, no wife, No house or land still seemed quite natural.”

This poem seems to contain the greatest self-recognition, the closest the persona can be to Larkin, the poet. “Only numbness registered the shock / of finding how much had gone of life.” As time passes, has his life, so far, been a waste? When he holds up Dockery and his son in contrast, what does he have to show for his life?Larkin believes that Dockery merely followed the “innate assumption” that he should marry and have children.

For Larkin, the idea of being “added to” – having a “wife”, a “son” – meant dilution. Larkin believed the expression: “the greatest enemy of art is the pram in the hall.” He believed, to be married and have children would stifle his creativity, take him away from the art that he centred himself around, divide him.

But it’s these “innate assumptions” that “Suddenly harden into all we’re got”. For Larkin, looking back, he sees that he has “nothing” – stressed by the repetition of the word. Yet even for Dockery, with his son, the assumptions are threatening, as they “rear / Like sand-clouds, thick and close” – suffocating.

The Whitsun Weddings

The Whitsun Weddings

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:

  Not till about

One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday

Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,

All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense

Of being in a hurry gone. We ran

Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street

Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence

The river's level drifting breadth began,

Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept

  For miles inland,

A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.

Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and

Canals with floatings of industrial froth;

A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped

And rose: and now and then a smell of grass

Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth

Until the next town, new and nondescript,

Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn't notice what a noise

  The weddings made

Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys

The interest of what's happening in the shade,

And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls

I took for porters larking with the mails,

And went on reading. Once we started, though,

We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls

In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,

All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event

  Waving goodbye

To something that survived it. Struck, I leant

More promptly out next time, more curiously,

And saw it all again in different terms:

The fathers with broad belts under their suits

And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;

An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,

The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,

The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.

  Yes, from cafés

And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed

Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days

Were coming to an end. All down the line

Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;

The last confetti and advice were thrown,

And, as we moved, each face seemed to define

Just what it saw departing: children frowned

At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;

 The women shared

The secret like a happy funeral;

While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared

At a religious wounding. Free at last,

And loaded with the sum of all they saw,

We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.

Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast

Long shadows over major roads, and for

Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say

  I nearly died,

A dozen marriages got under way.

They watched the landscape, sitting side by side

- An Odeon went past, a cooling tower, And

someone running up to bowl - and none

Thought of the others they would never meet

Or how their lives would all contain this hour.

I thought of London spread out in the sun,

Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across

  Bright knots of rail

Past standing Pullmans, 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 changed can give. 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 poem has eight rhymed stanzas, of ten lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABABCDECDE. The lines in each stanza have five stresses except the second line, which has only two. The shorter line introduces a visual contrast and may suggest to you the alternating but regular rhythm of a train. This rhythm is also created by run-on lines which pause briefly in the middle of sentences: “all sense / of being in a hurry gone”; “we ran / Behind the backs of houses”.

The language of the first part of the poem seems to appeal well to the senses - the feel of the “hot cushions”, the sight of cars “blinding windscreens” reflecting the sun, the smell of the fish-dock, of grass and of the train's upholstery. A warm, sleepy atmosphere is created which draws the reader in. Larkin gives us quick snapshots of the passing landscape. As in the poem 'Here', we see industry as well as countryside. The canal's “industrial froth” and the “new and nondescript” towns with “acres of dismantled cars” suggest that Larkin doesn't find modern scenery entirely sympathetic. When he finally notices the wedding parties he is ruthless in his description of their style - the women’s dresses are “parodies of fashion”, they are “grinning” and “pomaded”. The mothers are 'loud and fat', the uncles 'shout smut' the fathers are sweaty “seamy foreheads”. You might consider whether Larkin's presentation of the wedding parties also reflects his view of their social class.

Gradually, Larkin and the reader become involved in the moment of transition when the newly married couples leave their families and join the train. This 'moving on' is both actual and symbolic. Women “share the secret like a happy funeral”: a conjunction of words, which at first seems contradictory. How can a funeral be happy, or a wedding resemble a funeral? Larkin uses the odd juxtaposition to suggest the conflicting emotions, which marriage inspires - it is both joyful, and represents a loss. Part of this loss can be a loss of sexual virginity, implied by the “religious wounding”, which awes the girls.

The vocabulary of Larkin's poems is typically familiar (look for everyday words like “perm”, “nylon”, “Odeon” but in the last two stanzas the imagery becomes more metaphorical. London in the sun seems like a golden field, its postal districts “packed like squares of wheat”, the train with all its passengers is compared to “an arrow-shower” shooting forward - a positive image of shared experience. Change brings energy and “power”. Larkin stands halfway between involvement and detachment - observing marriage's rite of passage without directly participating in it.

Here

Here

Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows
And traffic all night north; swerving through fields
Too thin and thistled to be called meadows,
And now and then a harsh-named halt, that shields
Workmen at dawn; swerving to solitude
Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants,
And the widening river's slow presence,
The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud,

Gathers to the surprise of a large town:
Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster
Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water,
And residents from raw estates, brought down
The dead straight miles by stealing flat-faced trolleys,
Push through plate-glass swing doors to their desires -
Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies,
Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers – 

A cut-price crowd, urban yet simple, dwelling
Where only salesmen and relations come
Within a terminate and fishy-smelling
Pastoral of ships up streets, the slave museum,
Tattoo-shops, consulates, grim head-scarfed wives;
And out beyond its mortgaged half-built edges
Fast-shadowed wheat-fields, running high as hedges,
Isolate villages, where removed lives

Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, un-talkative, out of reach.

There are many examples of repetition throughout the poem: “here”, imagery, and stanza format. The repetition of “here” lacks a definite meaning, contributing to the monotonous flow of the poem and the uncertainty the subject feels. As the setting of the poem moves from industrialized city toward isolated villages in the first three stanzas, the stanza format remains the same: eight lines, with a list of items starting in the sixth line; the effect of this continuity is a feeling of monotony and disappointment.

Images of cities, towns, and farms are presented in the poem also. This visual description of the poem’s message helps Larkin subtly criticize the lack of emotion or depth of thought shown by his surroundings. The different images also show that despite the seeming benefits of an urban setting: proximity, “piled gold clouds” or a rural setting: simple, “undisturbed houses”, neither environment provides the humanity and joy which is “out of reach”.

The first stanza is filled with contrast. The physical movement of the speaker from the “rich industrial shadows” to the thin fields shows the gap in economic status between the two societies. In addition, the skies and clouds of the countryside are opposed by the “gull-marked mud”. This shows the parity within society that dominates the poem. In lines 6-8, Larkin includes a list of farming images: haystacks, hares, a river; this abundance of material goods rather than meaningful products (such as writings or diaries) expresses the increasing societal focus on material successes.

Larkin continues to condemn the increasing material consumerism of society in his second stanza; though the large town has “domes and statues, spires and cranes”, its residents still are concerned solely with their own well-being and material gain. The town has items “to their desires” yet instead of appreciating their possessions, the residents continue to produce useless grains and barges. With this, Larkin implies that consumerism is like a drug: the more you get (“cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, and sharp shoes”) the more you want, as residents begin to steal from each other.

In the third stanza, Larkin emphasizes the individualism that results from concentration on success. Others are ignored and disrespected as slaves or hindrances. Residents also build high hedges to shield themselves from each other, creating “isolate villages” and “removed lives”. The message of the poem is that serenity and harmony, though existent, are “out of reach” and that materialism results in inattention to others’ needs, portrayed in stanza four.

Larkin’s rhyme scheme, in which rhymes are present but the pattern changes in every four lines, and use of slant rhyme seem to parallel the inattention of materialists to detail. In addition, the first three stanzas of the poem are one continuous stream of thought. This ranting hints at the frustration of the speaker, who is disillusioned by the growing individualism.

Ambulances

Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.

Then children strewn on steps or road,
Or women coming from the shops
Past smells of different dinners, see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed,

And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede. Poor soul,
They whisper at their own distress;

For borne away in deadened air
May go the sudden shut of loss
Round something nearly at an end,
And what cohered in it across
The years, the unique random blend
Of families and fashions, there

At last begin to loosen. Far
From the exchange of love to lie
Unreachable insided a room
The traffic parts to let go by
Brings closer what is left to come,
And dulls to distance all we are.

The symbol of the ambulance at once implies death. They are like ‘closed confessionals’. Sitting in the ambulance. In both the ambulance and the confessional. When apprehended as a symbol of death, it is indeed ‘closed’ as Death possesses no openings. The ‘silence’ of death is juxtaposed against the ‘loud noon’s of the cities.’ The noon is glaring and so are the glances that the ambulance receives. However, it does not return any of these stares as it is totally apathetic to the practicalities of life.

The phrase “Light glossy grey” though it refers to the colours of the ambulance, they may also allude to the various stages in life. It reiterates how individuals in all walks of life are vulnerable to the universal phenomenon, and: “All streets in time are visited.” The ambulance may come to rest on any kerb; any person may be the victim regardless of criteria. It may be children strewn on steps or road, or ladies coming from shops. People consume ‘dinner’ or food as a basic prerequisite to life; Death is relevant here and is a constant theme throughout the poem. Bodies are carried away only to be ‘stowed’ away like the blankets. The colour ‘red’ signifying blood and the ‘white’ face add to the gloomy atmosphere of the poem.

The ‘solving emptiness’ stresses the existential dilemma of man. His doings and achievements are reduced to nihilism in the confrontation with death. People reaffirm the truth for a second as it dawns on them with its omnipotent force.

“So permanent and blank and true.” As the doors of the ambulance unfasten, people exclaim in sympathy. However, this sympathy is more than empathy; it is directed at themselves, who may perhaps be the next victims.

In the fourth stanza, the poet shifts the scene to the interior of the ambulance. The patient senses the sudden “shut of loss,” the fear that death is around the corner. One wonders when Death is portrayed as a universal phenomenon; he projects the victims of death in this poem predominantly as women. Perhaps his misogynistic views attribute to this aspect. The last defining moment of the poem, also has the woman apprehending the unavoidable fear. Individual tastes and differences no longer matter. The poet is slightly satiric here. In his “Whitsun Weddings” also, he projects women as “parodies of fashion.” The victim is far from the ‘exchange of love’, distanced from the give and take of love. The ‘traffic parts’ are side-stepped: all the directions and guidance’s received in life are of no consequence on the edge of Death.

Take One Home for the Kiddies

Take One Home for the Kiddies
On shallow straw, in shade less glass,
Huddled by empty bowls, they sleep:
No dark, no dam, no earth, no grass -
Mam, get us one
But it soon wears off somehow of them to keep.
Living toys are something novel,.
Fetch the shoebox, fetch the shovel -
Mam, we're playing funerals now.

In this poem Larkin is criticizing parents for buying their children pets which they will then treat as toys and mistreat; like living toys. The themes in this poem are parents, judgement, children and cruelty; this poem is strange as it shows Larkin to be caring for something; this differs from a lot of the other poems in the Whitsun Weddings collection in which Larkin shows complete cynicism. Take One Home for the Kiddies holds very strong images for one that is so short; for example, the animals lying 'On shallow straw, in shadeless grass'  and then at the end of the poem the 'shoebox' and the 'shovel'. 

The poem is a short one that it set out in two stanzas, the first stanza is set in the pet shop where the child pesters their mum to buy them a pet.

This first stanza shows that even in the pet shop the animals life is a miserable one; Larkin portrays this by showing that the pets aren't meant to be in that environment 'No dark, no dam, no earth, no grass-'. The children in the poem just see the pets as 'Living toys' that will bore them after a while 'it soon wears off somehow', Larkin sees that the parents know that the pet won't get treated well but will do anything to stop their children pestering them. This shown by the way that the children get the final line at the end of each stanza, the parents never go against what the children say.

In Take One Home for the Kiddies Larkin uses devices in a satirical manner to portray just how stupid buying pets for children knowing full well that they will mistreat them is. For example the sibilance in the first stanza 'sh' sounds like they are trying to keep it a secret that they are there so they won't get picked and have awful lives in somebodies house.

The rhyme scheme of AB AB makes the poem seem cheerful, symbolizing the callous nature of the children who see the death of their pet as 'playing funerals' rather than a sad event. The short, direct nature of this poem could be seen to reflect the short insignificant lives that the animals live.