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11 Detailed summary sheets | 'Whitsun Weddings' collection by Philip Larkin | Analysis, structure, themes, links to Duffy, context and critics£5.99
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Detailed summary sheets of Philip Larkin's poems from his collection 'Whitsun Weddings'.
These include a brief summary of the poem, analysis of the lines, structure and themes, relevant contexts and critics, and links to poems from 'Mean Time' by Carol Ann Duffy.
There are summary sheets for t...
MR BLEANEY - LARKIN
Summary The speaker moves into a room where the previous occupant, Mr Bleaney, had
lived a solitary and dull life. The speaker reflects on their similar mediocrity.
Title - Title ‘Mr’ connotes anonymity; a stranger, emphasising how familiar and
similar Mr Bleaney appears to the speaker.
- ‘Bleaney’, suggests bleak, mean.
Analysis - ‘The Bodies’ paired with past tense invites thoughts of death.
- ‘Till they moved him’ ambiguity, suggests he died in the room and nobody
found him until he had to be moved.
- ‘Flowered curtains, thin and frayed’ reflects ageing.
- ‘Fall to within five inches of the sill’ suggests feelings of disconnection
and incongruity.
- ‘Bed, upright chair’’ solitary items emphasise loneliness and isolation: no
sense of life. Links to ‘Room’.
- ‘Sixty-watt bulb’ suggesting spiritual and physical gloominess.
- ‘I’ll take it’ speaker subverts expectations after describing how dull and
unappealing the room is.
- ‘The same saucer-souvenir’ sibilance suggests hushed stillness.
- ‘Drown the jabbering set’ wanting to drown out the only noise in the
silence suggests Mr Bleaney actually desired isolation.
- ‘Kept plugging on at the four aways’ betting: the only sense of
spontaneity and suggests hope for a chance of a better life.
- ‘Put him up for summer holidays’ the phrase ‘put up’ again suggests
Bleaney wanted solitude rather than escape from it.
- ‘And grinned, and shivered’ ambiguity reflecting the confusion as to
whether his isolation is wanted or unwanted.
- ‘How we live measures our own nature’ collective pronouns could
suggest the speaker and Bleaney are merging into one.
- ‘Having no more to show than one hired box’ double meaning: the small
room or a coffin, again invites thoughts of death.
- ‘I don’t know’ as the final line suggests their lives are so mediocre and
insignificant that the speaker gives up on trying to find meaning out of it.
Structure - Regular quatrains (four lines per stanza): reflects dull mundanity of life.
- Enjambment: emphasises the longevity and inescapability of life.
- Very subtle ABAB rhyme scheme.
Themes - Isolation: is it wanted or unwanted here?
- Ageing / Death: fear of ageing with nothing much to show.
- Mediocrity: self-fulfilling prophecy, gloomy room for a gloomy life.
- Hopelessness: no hints of a better future, just endlessly miserable.
- Unhappiness: sense of dread and melancholy.
Links - Room: strong descriptions of a squalid, solitary room with a feeling of
misery and isolation. However ‘Mr Bleaney’ could be a more personal
poem, the speaker reflecting on their own mediocrity and how this room
reflects the mediocrity of their life. ‘Room’ could be more a social
commentary on Thatcherite economy, with anti-capitalist elements,
honest presentations of lower-class living.
Context - Larkin’s fear of ageing and death which is reflected in many other poems,
e.g. ‘Dockery & Son’: ‘Life is first boredom, then fear’. He believed that
old people are wasting their time by reminiscing on the past and are
simply waiting for their death.
- Isolation: Larkin lived an isolated childhood, homeschooled until age 8
with no friends or relatives visiting, and choosing a private life away from
publicity and fame.
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