Larkin put "The Building" in the middle of his collection for a reason, it is a pillar that supports the rest of the collection with its long lines and many verses, and because of this, is maybe a bit more clearer than some of his other poems in the ideas and views that are expressed through it. Of course, being a Larkin a poem, there is the obligatory underlayer whom so many people miss, but in "The Building" it is easier to discern and comprehend.
The title of the poem, "The Building" already hints at the main theme of the poem. The word "building" is a very vague term and in it's vagueness one can make out the fright of the author for this building, he cannot specify that it is a hospital as if not saying the word will make it go away. At the same time in this poem, Larkin makes out the hospital as the real world, everything around it is fake so that the word "building" is put in contrast to his view of what it really is. The poem starts in this indistinct manner and moves onto a much more definite reality: death.
The first thing we discover about the building is the way it dominates the author's view, of all buildings he can see it is the tallest, it "shows up for miles". Although he doesn't want to know what it is, it dominates his view and his destiny - all men and women end up in the hospital before they die, and there is that sense again, of Larkin's fear of death. He sees that the hospital is the real life, all else is false, you delude yourself all your life about death, pretending that it doesn't exist yet when you get in the hospital you finally have to face the truth. He names the places he would like it to be: a hotel, an airport lounge, a bus, but he can no longer delude himself it is a hospital. From the outside everything seems confused, unreal, he cannot even make out if it is a hospital. All those places, which he would normally loathe: an airport lounge or a bus are better than a hospital that carries a sense of finality, you go in but you don't come back out, it's made to look like normal buildings and places but once your inside you know where you are. But at the same time, a hospital has similarities with these places, it is in a way a sum-up of life, "there are paperbacks", "the porters are scruffy" and people sit on "rows of steel chairs". Even when he sees a nurse, he cannot bring himself to make the connection, she is a "kind of nurse".
