What are the poet's feelings about life and death?
In The Explosion, Philip Larkin portrays many ideas, about life and death, through telling the story of an explosion, and the surroundings, as well as their response. He portrays his ideas that there may possibly be an afterlife through the events in the church, and also that death is an event that affect everyone in the surroundings, and that death may possibly be an everyday occurrence, in his opinion.
Larkin writes that the vicar says ‘we shall see them face to face’. This suggests that these people are still living, but the fact that they are said to be ‘living in God’s house’ suggests that although they are not ‘living’ on Earth, they are still alive, but instead, in heaven. In addition, in the final stanza, the ‘eggs’ are said to be ‘unbroken’. Eggs are normally symbols of new life, and the fact that they are ‘unbroken’ despite being ‘lodged in the grasses’ during the explosion essentially ensures that there will be a ‘new life’ or ‘afterlife’ for those killed in the explosion. The fact that this stanza is separated from the rest of the poem, with caesura at the end, emphasises this line, possibly suggesting that Larkin feels strongly about this subject, and wants to convey this message especially to the reader. In addition, it is said that ‘wives saw men of the explosion’, possibly further conveying how these people are still alive in the afterlife, and how the ‘wives’ perceive them to still be alive and present on this Earth, possibly disillusioned by despair.
