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 Was he that withdrawn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.