An interviewer once remarked to Larkin that" Your favourite subjects are failure and weakness" How far do you agree that failure and weakness are favourite subjects in the 'Whitsun weddings'.

Authors Avatar

Sophie Johnson

An interviewer once remarked to Larkin that” Your favourite subjects are failure and weakness” How far do you agree that failure and weakness are favourite subjects in the ‘Whitsun weddings’. In the answer you should either refer to two poems in detail or range more widely.

The poems ‘Mr Bleaney’, ‘Dockery and son’ and ‘Wild oats’ are all presented with the subjects of failure and weakness. Failure is to be disappointed with something you have wanted to achieve or attain and so the subject of failure in the poems will be seen as someone being unsuccessful. Weakness means the flaw or fault thus giving the person limitations in their plans.

In the poem Mr Bleaney, Larkin uses the first five stanzas to describe the room and Mr Bleaney’s life. We get the impression of an uncomfortable, plain, functional room. Larkin gives us this impression by calling it a ‘hired box’. This describes Mr bleaney’s room but can also refer to Mr Bleaney's coffin.  Larkin goes on to describe the room, ‘Flowered curtains, thin and frayed’. The curtains seem to become Mr Bleaney himself. The overall sense of chilliness and dreariness which comes from the room extends to Mr Bleaney himself, whom we imagine to be thin, shivering and isolated, with little protection from the outside world and the "frigid wind" which better fitting curtains might have provided. This lack of protection shows the failure in Mr Bleaney’s life.

Join now!

Larkin goes on to talk about Mr Bleaney’s ‘strip of building land’. The word ‘strip’ associates with the strip of window left by the ill-fitting curtains, and therefore relates to the skinniness and the poor quality of Bleaney's life and ‘frame’. The fact that it is ‘building land’ suggests that it is not promising or fertile land. This also shows the weakness and failure by the failure of his way of life and the infertility of the land.

Larkin continues to describe the state of Mr Bleaney’s garden; ‘Tussocky, littered.’ ‘Tussocky’, meaning untidy, and ‘littered’ suggest that Mr ...

This is a preview of the whole essay