‘Ignorance’ is another poem in Larkin’s collection ‘The Whitsun Weddings’. Ignorance is the state of not knowing i.e. someone is ignorant. Larkin opens by saying “strange to know nothing,” this is neither question nor fact. Larkin could be imagining what it would be like to know nothing implying he is intelligent or he could be questioning everything he knows. The poem is written in simplistic language which is almost child-like. This makes the poem more daunting, making our education and knowledge insignificant. He is trying to persuade us that we can only be sure of one thing, complete ignorance. Larkin seems to agree with the saying ‘True Knowledge exists in knowing you know nothing’. The poem seems to be representing a forthcoming, inevitable end. The poem is really telling us that everything is available to be questioned or changed, nothing is certain. It is another way of questioning our existence showing again Larkin is so uncertain about life and he appears to be disappointed that there is no underlying purpose.
‘Faith Healing’ is another of Larkin’s poems in which he makes a disappointing conclusion on life. The poem is told by a persona watching a faith healing group. A faith healer is someone who has a connection with God and by seeing them you are able to make that connection to and be ‘faith healed’. The most famous faith healer would be Jesus who many people see as genuine however the persona in this poem is very cynical and believes this ‘performance’ going on in front of him is a big scam. The persona describes “the women” filing “to where he stands”. This shows that only women feel the need to be faith healed here ands it implies the gullibility of women because the persona is showing that men would not usually attend because they know it’s fake. The man at the front, the ‘faith healer’ is dressed as a vicar;
“rimless glasses, silver hair, dark suit, white collar”
This is to show his religious connection with God. His voice is American which is very stereotypical because these sessions are more common over there and are often broadcast on television. The poem goes on to describe the women being “clasped” by the man and how after the “twenty seconds” of being connected they are told to leave. It appears that many of these people are completely in awe after this experience because they believe strongly enough that they have been healed and touched by God. They all move “sheepishly stray”. This is a religious quote from the bible but it also shows that some of the people were in shock and are now scared to re-enter into their lives changed. The last verse shows the persona being very cynical about the experience and the reader gets the impression that he sees no point in what he has just witnessed. He comes to the conclusion that the reason these women have showed up and felt the need to be healed was because they are lonely and have lived a life unloved. The persona believes that no amount of faith or touch from the healer is enough to cure an inner awareness of life unloved. The faith healer asks all his followers “what’s wrong?” and the persona’s realisation is “alls wrong”. This poem also seems to show that Larkin is disappointed, not only in the women who have been taken in by what he believes to be a con but also life in general. His conclusion that life is lonely when not including love could reflect his own life because he never married and it could be said he never found happiness.
From looking at Larkin’s life we could assume he found his own a disappointment because though he excelled in his writing and librarian status, he never started a family and was devastated when his father died, so much so he couldn’t write for a year. His disappointment of not starting a family with a woman could be illustrated in ‘Dockery and Son’ where he regrets not having a child to carry on the family name and relates life to being only “age, and then the only end of age”. In ‘This be the Verse’ Larkin blames all the things that go wrong in life on his or our parents. This is because we were brought up by them and they influenced us so much so that our life goes a certain way as a result of them. He concluded that life’s faults are there because your parents ‘fucked’ you up. Larkin also seemed to discuss fate occasionally and he believed everything must happen for a reason, so the reason his life would have been a disappointment would have been as a result of something he did, or in this case his parents did. ‘Mr Bleany’ and ‘Ambulances’ also question the nature of existence and conclude uncertainty.
Most of the poems in the collection ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ all seem to conclude in the same certainty; that life is disappointing and never what you expect it to be. This seemed to be Larkin’s view on his life and he expressed this through his poetry which although sometimes is saddening is very thoughtful and effective in that it makes you consider his point of view, no matter how pessimistic it may seem.
