Duffy and Larki
Larkin Themes:
Larkin Themes: Duffy Themes:
Religion Religion
Memories Memories
Pessimism Love
Realism
Time
Cynicism and Scepticism
Illusion The past
Isolation Relationships
Love, Identity
Nature Power of Language
Social chaos, Love
Alienation Failure
Boredom Entrapment
Death
Meaning of Life/ Momento Mori
Time
Power of Language Life choices
, DUFFY: The captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team
● AO1: BIG IDEA(s) of the poem?
A dramatic retrospective monologue about a man unable to let go of his past where he was young, popular, clever and at the peak of social standards.
Poem portrays his inability to move on and adapt to the present as his present day self has lost relevance.
● Top 5 form and structure. Enjambment, Lists, Repetition, Caesura etc
1. Caesura throughout the poem = Show how the speaker is piecing together his thoughts or shows his obnoxiousness as he doesn't let anyone get a word in edgeways . Childlike
syntax.
2. Dramatic Monologue
3. 4 regular stanzas, each with 8 lines each. This could represent the monotony in the narrator's life, and there is no encouragement to know things anymore. The poem's uninteresting
structure perhaps mirrors his reluctance to leave the past.
4. Childlike Syntax: E xcessive Caesuras that quicken the pace and Teenage Slang ‘Two hour snog’
5. Caesura: ‘No snags. The Nile Rises in April. Blue and White’ Quick fire answers to questions that haven’t been asked to the speaker in decades. Boasts about irrelevant knowledge.
● AO2: Language?
● Definite Article: The Captain' The definite article, 'the' emphasises the noun, 'Captain' therefore reflecting the persona's attitudes on that great power he once possessed.
● Semantic Field of 1960’s Britain : ‘ Do Wah Diddy Diddy, Baby Love, Oh pretty woman’ ‘Supremes’ ‘Beatles’ ‘Dave Dee Dozy’ ‘Vimto’ ‘Mick’ = Recurring references to the past
emphasise the speakers attachment to this era and his unwillingness to let go.
● Asyndeton: ‘ Do wah diddy….’ and alliteration of 'Top Ten' surround the semantic field of 1960s i n Britain. The persona has aged since then but remains stuck in the past. Speaker
lists his memories in an obnoxious way
● Contrast: ‘Fizzing Hope’ is a
ntithesis ‘My stale wife’ alludes to how the excitement in his life has fizzled out. F
izzing Hope = Is a metaphor as well as epistemic modality that
conveys the persona's confidence on his intelligence as a child. I ronic that Duffy uses 'fizzing' the a djective has connotations of deflating, temporary fix.
● Metaphor: ‘The Clever Smell of my Satchel' , Synesthetic metaphor. The adjective, 'clever' has a cacophonous sound
● Time semantics: ‘I knew the capitals’ ‘I whooped’ ‘I lived’ ‘I blew’ ‘I sped’ The reader is aware that these things occurred in the past yet is attached to them. ‘For a year’ suggests
that everyone else started moving on apart from him
● Latin: Dominus Domine Dominum; Alliteration. Brags about his probable private school education.
● Imperatives: ‘ Try me. Come on’ Shows the persona's pushy nature.
● Tricolon: ‘The Blazer. The Badge. The tie. Constituent parts of the speaker during his glory days. He is attached to the importance he felt when he wore his uniform.
● Misogyny: ‘ Over pink pavements that girls chalked on’ the adverbs ‘Up’ contrast with the adverb ‘Over’ showing respect towards Nelson and Churchill and disrespect towards
women and ‘Stale Wife’ Speaker is implicitly misogynist and sees himself as being more important than women. Androcentric attitudes evident
● possessive pronoun: ‘in my prize shoes’ highlights the speakers repeated successes as a child.
● Repetition: ‘My country’ is repeated showing that the persona is grasping at the elements of the past that made him feel understood but feels ashamed because of everyone else
● Short sentence: ‘I want it back’ It = Metonymy for his entire childhood. persona's frustration with his present situation, wants to revisit the past..
● Onomatopoeia: Bzz = The sound of a gameshow buzzer
● Monosyllables: ‘I say to my stale wife’ Monosyllabic and Blunt. ‘I say to my boss’
● ‘Nobody’
● Cacophonic: ‘Thick kids’ Shows contempt and frustration as well as his egotistical nature. His kids wince in irritation at their father.
● Out of date knowledge: ‘Rhodesia’ and ‘Florins’ Rhodesia is the old name for Zimbabwe and out of date currency.
, ● Rhetorical Question: ‘How many florins in a pound?’ No redemption for persona who maintains that his knowledge is still relevant. Question is left unanswered because nobody
else careS.
● AO3: RELEVANT contextual considerations?
● Top of the Form was a TV show that ran from from 1948 to 1986 and was the junior version of university challenge.
● The Supremes' - girl group from the 60's
● ‘Come See About Me?’ - a song by the Supremes, released in 1964
● 'a steel comb that I blew like Mick' - persona is doing an impression of Mick Jagger playing a harmonica
● dominus domine dominum' - different forms of the Latin word for master/sir
● 'Top Ten' - radio stations present the ten most popular singles sold during that week
● 'B-side' - side of a vinyl record, often the song recorded on the B-side is a secondary song that often does not appear on the artist's LP - less imppoprtant song much like how
speakers knowledge is secondary
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● AO5: Possible interpretations and/or useful critical quotations?
● ‘Over pink pavements that girls chalked on’ the adverbs ‘Up’ contrast with the adverb ‘Over’ showing respect towards Nelson and Churchill and disrespect towards women
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Possible THEMES? Ao4: Links to:
1. Time ● Send No Money
2. Loss of Innocence ●
3. Degradation of Women ●
4. Nostalgia
, LARKIN: Send no money
● AO1: BIG IDEA(s) of the poem?
Metaphysical as Larkin personifies time in this poem, creating the impression of an omnipotent and omniscient being. Time is a cruel yet honest being;.
The persona asks the personified time what the best way to live is/ to tell him the truth and time replies that Larkin should live passively (deception) and wait for the truth/ best way to
ive his life to be revealed to him. To the speakers dismay, time passes him by before he realises that he has been deceived by the illusion of time and therefore wasted his life..
Poem could be taken as a warning to people who are gullible enough to fall for consumer cons just because they come from what appears to be highly respectable companies
● Form and structure. Enjambment, Lists, Repetition, Caesura etc.
1. Three regular stanzas of 8 lines each representing a stage of speakers life.
2. ABCDEFEF rhyme scheme, reflects larkins childish perspective that youth is complex and ignorant whilst adulthood is secure and knowledgeable when n reality youth is
freedom and adulthood is bleak monotony
3.
4.
● AO2: Language?
● Title: A phrase often found on unreliable adverts that promise that consumers will ‘buy now, pay later’.
● Personification of Time: ‘Standing under the fobbed’ makes time seem vast and all encompassing. The word fobbed is a watch on a short chain = links time to materialism.
● Grotesque imagery: ‘Impendent belly’ Time Looms over the speaker.
● Conversion of time from noun to pronoun.
● Fricative Alliteration: ‘Tell me the truth, I said // Teach me the way things go’ mirrors the sounds of a ticking clock.
● Imperatives and Repetition: ‘Tell me // Teach me’ Shows the desperation of the speaker as they urgently want to know the truth about how to live life.
● Colloquialism: ‘Lads/ Were itching to have a bash’ Shows that the speaker feels disconnected from ‘all the others’ as they all want to waste their youth in ways that disinterest
the persona.
● Inverted syntax: ‘But i thought wanting unfair / I and finding out a clash’ There is incompatibility between blissful ignorance and knowledge. So speaker pursuits knowledge
about life rather than wanting to just live ignorantly.
● Semantic field of naivety: ‘Belly’ ‘Patted my head’ ‘Oh yes please’ ‘Oh thank you’ it can be inferred that the speaker is young and foolish. Time is aso condescending.
● Plosives: ‘Booming Boy’ Time is presented as godlike and a fatherly figure with a loud and resonating voice
● Synecdoche: ‘There’s no green in your eye’ Synecdoche. Green = associated with greed, enxy, money.
● Imperatives: ‘Sit here and watch’
● Metaphors: ‘Hail of Occurence’ Events in life are compared to a violent but natural storm and because life is presented a vulnerable, Time suggests that these occurrences erode
life into a ‘shape no one sees’ which could be a metaphor for death
● Rhetorical question: ‘Dare you look at that straight?’ Deceptively creates the illusion that he is being daring when he is being cowardly
● Repetition: ‘Oh Thank You’ ‘Oh yes please’ child-like syntax. Persona is vulnerable and gullible which links to title.
● Passive: Verb ‘Wait’ Speaker waits figuratively by living passively. Becomes an observer
● Bitter Tone: Half life is over now. The persona is now middle aged and has only come to realise that he has been deceived.
● Oxymoron: ‘Dark Mornings’ or could mean Winter = both connote to sadness and misery
● Plosive Alliteration: ‘ Bestial visor Bent om By the Blows’ = He has an ugly appearance because of his old age. He has still suffered the damaging effects of time despite being a
passive observer
● Quasi-Idiomatic Phrase: ‘What happened to Happen’ = ‘It is what it is’ Shows that he has realised that time is inevitable and cannot be controlled or observed
● Hypophora: ‘ What does it prove? Sod All’ Colloquial. Slang. Time is cold and cruel and now nothing matters. Rising cadence.
● Angry a nd bitter reflection: In this way i spent youth’ Falling cadence. Shows sadness but acceptance of his mistake
, ● Alliteration of Alveolar ‘T’ sound (Plosive): Sound like the words re being bitterly spat out. Tracing: following lines of destiny that have already been drawn. Trite: Insignificant.
Truss = A type of support.
● Closing lines reveal Larkin is aware that he was foolish to believe he could find Truth by living passively and leaning on the deceptive support that Time gave him as a child.
The only way to truly discover the truth of life is through experience and this is something that larkin missed out on.
● AO3: RELEVANT contextual considerations?
● 'Send no money' is often used in untrustworthy advertisements to cheat people out of their money by raising interest rates and highlights that advertisement can be
deceptive. It also could be interpreted as someone being independent and making their own way in the world.
● Larkin lived a solitary life, living in the same apartment for many years
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● AO5: Possible interpretations and/or useful critical quotations?
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Possible THEMES Links to:
● Time ● Captain of the 1964
● Illusion ● Selfs the man
● Regret ● Love songs in Age
● Youth
● Aging
, DUFFY: Litany
● AO1: BIG IDEA(s) of the poem?
A litany is a prayer/recital by a clergy and repeated by the people. The poem is about a child pretending to read whilst listening in to her mother and her married friends gossiping
about middle-class suburban life in the 1960’s in code, to protect the young child. However, the young child is smarter than these ladies realise and decodes their speech. Finally, the
poem concludes with the child repeating a statement from a fellow classmate, causing distress and shame to rise between her mother and the other present ladies. The poem could be
autobiographical.
● Top 5 form and structure. Enjambment, Lists, Repetition, Caesura etc.
● Enjambment: There are still faults in their idea of ‘perfection’ e.g tiny ladder / ran up Mrs Barr’s’ ‘and embarrassing word, broken / to bits’ ‘pretending / to read’ ‘malicious
pause / salted my tongue’
● Caesura: Reflects how the meeting between the women is guarded and doesn’t extend beyond trivial polite topics.
● Caesura: ‘told me to fuck off;’ highlights the horrified silence from the middle class ladies sat around this child.
● Free verse to emulate the freedom speech gives but four stanzas of 6 lines connotes constriction.
● AO2: Language?
● Sound imagery: ‘The soundtrack was a litany’ = A litany is a prayer/recital by a clergy and repeated by the people and this reflects the repetitive and unremarkable discussions
of the women.
● Semantic field of the 1960s = ‘Stiff haired wives’ and ‘Red smiles’ = could be seen as synecdoches for the 1960’s. The women are clones of each other. .
● Emphatic placement: ‘Candlewick bedspread three piece suite display cabinets’ = Obsession with catalogue items
● Fragility of their illusion: ‘Pyrex’ (a kitchenware brand) ‘Tiny ladder’ (in her tights; infers imperfection) ‘Biscuits’ ‘Leukemia’
● Emphatic Capitalisation: ‘Mrs Barr’s American Tan’ = Mocks the obsession with being conventional and buying into American ideals and brand names
● Metaphor: ‘Sly like a rumour. Language embarrassed them.’ = Caesura reflects how the conversations between the women is guarded and reserved to polite conversations
● Cacophony: ‘The terrible marriages Crackled, Cellophane’ = Antithesis of the perfect life they wish they lived
● The Lounge = Proper Noun. Mirrors a church congregation.
● Euphemism: ‘Bright stones’ euphemism for diamonds, they don’t want to break social conventions.
● Simile: ‘tensed the air like an accident’ = Any disruption to their idyllic gathering is likened to a serious accident.
● ‘Code’ = Shows the exclusive nature of their gathering. The code is the unsaid rules that they are expected to adhere to.
● Asyndeton: ‘no one had cancer, or sex, or debts, and certainly not leukaemia’ Speaker uses forbidden language brashly. Showing her internal opposition to these social
conventions and awareness of how conditioned their discussions are. They are purposely avoiding the bleak reality of life.
● ‘ mass grave of wasps // a butterfly stammered itself’ j uxtaposing the two species of wasps and butterflies. The butterfly represent freedom and youth that give the speaker
innocence.
● Colloquial: ‘told me to fuck off’ brash and cacophonic language is an antithesis of the lifestyle the women have tried to create
● Metaphor: ‘Salted my tongue’ It’s salty instead of sweet. Gritty instead of smooth as she is rebelling from their fake monotonous lives.
● Temporal Deixis: ‘Then’ = Shift in the atmosphere. The speaker is clearly in trouble.
● Verb “ thrilled” and adjective “malicious” adds effect by increasing the tension and drama
● Asyndeton: ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Barr,Mrs Hunt…’ Her mother is a sycophant and has an image to uphold hence her shame is ‘mute’ until their visitors leave and she can punish her
child with ‘The taste of soap’
● AO3: RELEVANT contextual considerations?
● The middle class women in the poem might have contrasted Duffy’s left wing views
● this poem could be autobiographical, therefore Duffy is reminiscing on a time where she swore in front of her mother’s frien
, ● Washing a child’s mouth out with soap would’ve been a typical punishment when Duffy was growing up
● AO5: Possible interpretations and/or useful critical quotations?
● Elizabeth O’Reilly “incorporates humour with serious insights and social commentary” links to Duffy bringing awareness to the hidden and not so perfect lives of middle
class women.
Possible THEMES: Links to:
● illusions Sunny Prestatyn - The Power of Language
● Deconstructing illusion
● The 1960’s
● Power of Language
,LARKIN: Sunny Prestatyn
● AO1: BIG IDEA(s) of the poem?
● Larkin considers a billboard poster which implores, ‘Come To Sunny Prestatyn’ – the Welsh seaside resort popular with holidaymakers well into the twentieth century. The
poster uses the image of a beautifully and sexually alluring young woman to sell the notion of a holiday in Prestatyn to the observer. However, shortly after this poster was
put up, it was defaced by vandals.
● Larkins critique of a society that sells illusions to vulnerable people despite them being unattainable.
● Larkins misogyny as the woman is defaced.
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● Form and structure. Enjambment, Lists, Repetition, Caesura etc.
1. The contrived rhyme scheme of the poem also signifies disorder of post war britain where a recovering economy could not keep up with the pce of these ever
changing advertisements that promoted what most couldn't afford.
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● AO2: Language?
● Imperative Mood: ‘Come To Sunny Prestatyn’ typical of an advertisement. Invites the reader.
● Positive imagery: the verb ‘laughed’ connotes to idyllism, happiness, peace, bliss. Tries to sell the idea of happiness.
● Suggestive: ‘Kneeling up on the sand’
● Juxtaposition of innocence and promiscuity: ‘tautened white satin’ tautened means tight; tight clothing reveals her voluptuous form but white satin connotes virginity.
‘Thighs and / spread breast-lifting arms’ ( soft and sibilant ) = Promiscuous, sells the idea of sex but also links to the sexual liberation women of the 60’s had achieved.
Luxurious and flattering to her figure. She is the presentation of perfection- an adult perfection which Larkin clearly appreciated.
● Preposition ‘ Behind’ implicitly create distance between the illusion the poster is selling and the real world as they are not compatible with each other
● Adjective: ‘Hunk of coast The word "hunk" is a pun with the duel meaning of being a chunk of something and the colloquial term for an attractive man, whilst also having
negative connotations in terms of something be not well put together e.g. a hunk of metal.
● Hyperbolic; ‘Hotel with palms’ This is unrealistic portrayal of Wales because there are no Palm trees ther
● Plosive: ‘Slapped up one day in March’ carelessly thrown up and indicates the beginning of a series of violent defilement of the posters and also the deconstruction of the
illusion. T he word "slapped" could be seen to link to 'slapper'-a prostitute who flaunts her body for admiration and payment
● Time s emantics: ‘a couple of weeks’ shows how little time the illusion lasted.
● Cacaphony: ‘Snaggle toothed’ ‘boss eyes’ Grotesque imagery that is the antithesis of the angel-like celestial imagery found in the first stanza.
● Degradation: From ‘breasts’ to ‘tits’ which is vulgar and colloquial. ‘Fissured crotch..scored in’ = Cacophonic sounds that reflect the sound of someone violently scrawling
over the poster. ‘Moustached lips of her smile’ = Unfeminine.
● ‘Tuberous cock and balls’ Explicit and brash language. The assertion of male dominance over femininity shows opposition to female sexual empowerment. Could also be the
opposition to the illusion that is being sold, highlighting that the people are not as naive and gullible as they thought.
● Juxtaposition of tuberous cock and balls and ‘titch thomas’ shows = 1) m en with the smallest amount of power could dominate women who were seen as not capable of
having liberation. Titch Thomas could also present the smallest people in society.
● Semantic f ield of violence: ‘knife’ ‘stab right through’ ‘slapped up’ ‘tear’ B
rutal reality is creeping in and people are trying to destroy this false perfection. Despite this,
Larkin still looks on the woman sympathetically and states that "she was too good for this life", with "was" suggesting that she has passed.
● Sympathy or Scepticism: ‘ She was too good for this life’ Falling cadence that contrasts with the previous violent words. Larkin could be sympathetically saying that sexual
liberation for women is ‘too good’ for his time period, He is mourning the loss of her innocence and perfectionor that the illusion was literally too good for this life
, ● Death of the illusion: ‘A great transverse tear’ (alliteration showing the extent of the rip and hinting at a tear of sadness/mourning) The illusion is finally destroyed and there
are only remnants of it ‘a hand ‘ and ‘some blue’ metonymys for what was once there.
● Emphatic: ‘Now fight cancer is there’ highlights Larkins cynical undertones in the poem, as Larkin presents the idea that to many people illnesses like cancer are not
unreachable and unattainable like ‘Sunny Prestatyn’ especially during the austerity post-war Britain had. Caesura = Finality of the situation.
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● AO3: RELEVANT contextual considerations?
● The beginning prevalence of hyper sexualisation of young women in the 20th century (1960’s)
● Post war austerity. Larkin was writing in post war Britain
● Larkin was a bachelor: Who was never married but had series of girlfriends
● Larkin’s poems centred around the ideas of honesty and realism about self and the outside world
● Prestatyn: Place in Wales
● AO5: Possible interpretations and/or useful critical quotations?
Possible THEMES Links to:
