Thorough analysis and summary of Larkin's poem 'Age', produced by all A* achieving student at A level.
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Course
Unit 3 - Poetry
Institution
PEARSON (PEARSON)
This is a 2 page document that acts as a thorough essay plan and revision resource. It is split into an analysis of the poem itself, context, form, structure, language and ideas. (Hence touching upon all A0s assessed in the A level poetry exam.)
Age
This is a poem that speaks on the difficulties associated with aging, and how the speaker is always
going to wonder about their own legacy. With the passage of time, the speaker seems tired of the
‘game’ of life, and seems quite an isolated figure from the outside world. As the speaker recognises
that they can never retrieve their youth or lost time, they become reflective on what legacy they will
eventually leave when time runs out.
Key themes:
Passage of time and aging process.
Legacy.
Death and mortality.
Isolation and detachment.
Society and life.
Different poems to link to and why:
Skin- aging process.
At grass- legacy.
Church going- legacy and passage of time.
If, my darling- use of place, making something intangible into something concrete.
Contextual links:
Larkin’s was self-conscious about his own legacy, so the poem seems to have an
autobiographical quality.
This collection was focused on the realistic portrayal of life- the ageing process of course
being a key universal experience and fear of his readers.
Sense of affection for isolation in this poem- linking to Larkin’s own solitude.
Key aspects of form and structure:
Key moments of caesura and enjambment.
Apostrophe towards end of first stanza.
Key methods and arguments of poem:
In the opening line, Larkin takes an abstract idea, age, and turns it into a piece of concrete imagery.
A simile describes how youth cannot be restored…
‘my age fallen away like white swaddling’- simile. This image has connotations of both birth
and death- you swaddle a corpse with a shroud or a baby with a blanket. This dual
interpretation is important, as the speaker talks about both the death of his previous
youthful self, and birth of the present older self.
o ALSO- swaddling is something protective. Relates to how ageing makes one more
vulnerable and fragile- ultimately closer to death.
o ‘fallen’- something that cannot be restored. No control over ageing process.
The white swaddling ‘floats into the middle distance, becomes an inhabited cloud.’ This
distance further represents that his youth cannot be restored and reached- it is in the
distance of our past and memories.
o Also- clouds have an intangible quality- something you can see and not grasp.
Something dream-like about this image too.
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