Exploring Identity and Time in Here, an Arundel Tomb and the Whitsun Weddings

Exploring Identity and Time in Here, An Arundel Tomb and The Whitsun Weddings

Larkin has been criticized over the years for the moroseness of his poems, the blackened description of everyday life that some people say lacks depth, however, unlike many other poets, Larkin does not always write the truth or the depth of his feelings. In many there is a voice, trying to convince its author of something that is usually quite evident or exploring itself but revealing only the surface. Why he is trying to convince himself and what are is true feelings present the real challenge and profundity of Larkin poems. The search for one's identity, combined for everybody in one's unique fantasies and realities is a recurrent theme in his poems. As is time, the passing of it, the transformation it engenders and the damage it inflicts.

In "Here", identity or the search for one's identity is the main theme. The search is symbolized by the journey taken by Larkin, which takes him through the countryside before Hull, through Hull and finally into the countryside and the beach outside Hull. He finds his identity in the countryside outside Hull, however, he knows that although it is here that he yearns for, it is not his true self, it is his fantasy, the "Here" he would like to live in but that is nevertheless "out of reach". His real identity can be found in Hull with the people and city he so despises.

His journey starts in the farm lands before Hull, he does not stop his car, he swerves passed everything as he knows it is not what he is searching for and the slowness of the life he describes here is used in contrast to the imagined speed of the author's swerving vehicle on the motorway.

His next stop, his arrival in Hull marks an abrupt change in scenery ("the surprise of a large town") and the driver stops his car, Larkin uses the word "Here" here for the first time so that we assume he has at last found something, a part of his identity. What he sees, described in the next two paragraphs is a city he despises, a city of people whom he feels are below him, yet he knows it and them extremely. He knows about the contrast between its "domes and statues" and "grain scattered streets", as he knows the people there, he describes their movements as "stealing" suggesting stealth and sleaze as they move towards the supermarkets, swinging doors to their "desires", emphasizing that the desires are theirs. What they want (Cheap suits, red kitchenware, sharp shoes...) is not what he wants, it is too "cut-price" and cheap. He describes Hull as the average persons city, "urban yet simple", filled with average people. However, it seems as if Larkin is pushing himself to loathe these people, trying to convince himself how horrible these people and this city are with it's "fishy-smelling" streets. Yet he probably feels akin with them, as they are his reality.

The next stop of his search is obviously his desired final destination, he uses "Here" many times as if it is even more like ' 'home' than Hull. It is a world unspoilt by man where "leaves unnoticed thicken", "Hidden weeds flower" and "neglected waters quicken", there is a "beach Of shapes and shingle" and he says, "Here is unfenced existence". However, it is unspoilt by man because nobody lives there, if he were to be there then it would be spoilt, he therefore recognises that it is better for it to stay an imagined world "out of reach".

An Arundel Tomb is a poem about time, the way everything mutates over the years until what you meant to be most important in the beginning becomes insignificant. Underlying his ideas on time and its passage and damage are the themes of death but also love, a theme not usually associated with Larkin so that maybe he should be remembered for "What will survive of us is love" and not for the usually simply interpreted lines from "Dockery and son": "Life is a boredom, then fear".

The poem starts off by describing the sculpture around which the poem revolves, the earl and the countess are quite a proper couple but their features are quite indistinct, Larkin uses the words "blurred" and "vaguely" to describe them. Everything is very plain and lacks decoration in the manner of the "pre - baroque"; the feeling we get from this sculpture is that emotions were very stiff in these times so that it comes as a shock that they are holding hands. Larkin describes the shock as a "sharp tender shock" which suggests that although it is abrupt it is quite pleasing.

It is the third verse that the voyage through time begins, at first when it is seen, presumably after the death of the couple, it is not noted for that gesture of love so that even the sculptor thought it would be "The Latin names around the base" that would survive. Larkin tries to show us that the purpose of something done in the past can change in time so that it is something completely different that survives. He is maybe thinking of his own writing and what it will come to symbolise in the future, even now people like his poems for different reasons than 20 years ago. This hint of the theme of identity can be pushed further to suggest that the speed with which the times change for these statues might reflect the speed of how society has changed since he was a child (free sex...). Soon people come to see the sculpture "to look, not read" so that the intention of the artist, to have the Latin names be remembered has failed. What survives of them is their love symbolised by the "undated" snow, but many more people come to see them now, from "friends" in the beginning to "succeeding eyes" later on and finally "endless altered people".

However the couple, throughout the ages, have lost their identity, so that "only an attitude remains". To him time has changed them into "Untruth" as they have lost their individuality, this suggests that Larkin is frightened of time and that he might lose his own individuality. The poem and the collection end on a very optimistic, sort of dreamy tone as a lot of Larkin poems do (such as "High windows"):