Home is so Sad

Home is so Sad

Home is so Sad is Philip Larkin’s poem is a poem addressing various issues such as the theme of home, separation, solitude, and loss. The poet describes how a home can be sad when people have deserted it. Normally, home is regarded as warm and sweet. However, Larkin tries to bring out when a home is deserted; it is no longer associated with warmth as sweetness. When there is no family, soul, or heart in a home, it loses its meaning of being home, and everything becomes sad.

Larkin has carefully chosen words in the poem carefully to pass his message across. For instance, in the third stanza, she uses the word “wither” to show how, when the house is left, it longs to serve its purpose of a home. Larkin says, “Of anyone to please, it withers so…” (Larkin 4 Home is so Sad). The word “withers” means that a plant that was alive becomes dry. In the context of the poem, the once alive is not alive because it has no inhabitants (it withered). The other word that caught my attention is the use of the word “theft” and ‘bereft” (Larkin 3, 5 Home is so Sad) because of the curiosity to understand what was robbed or lacked from home. The poet says, “As if to win them back. “Instead, bereft …..Having no heart to put aside the theft” (Larkin 3, 5 Home is so Sad). In the poem, these words are used to the loss of family and inhabitants who once belonged to the home.

The dominant emotion in Larkin’s poem is a sad one because, just like the way people feel sad when they leave their home, the same sad feelings are implied in the poem. The speaker says that “Of anyone to please, it withers so…” (Larkin 4 Home is so Sad). The use of the word brings sadness in that the speaker feels as if the house is dying and feels the sadness of such a loss. The use of the words “theft” “bereft” further amplifies the feeling of sadness.

The poem tries to bring the idea that home is somewhere where we find joy, warmth, and happiness. In case these are not available at home, then the home becomes sad.

This be the Verse

This be the Verse is a poem talking about upbringing and genetic inheritance. The poet emphasizes what people inherit and what they pass on to their kids. He argues that parents inflict emotional damage on their kids because they pass their flaws to them. Nevertheless, parents do this because they were messed up by their old-fashioned parents. Larkin concludes by saying that it is the way of human kind to pass their miseries to their children and their children’s children, and that becomes a vicious cycle. These miseries are likened to a coastal shelf where sand and rock deposits are laid down gradually over decades. Similarly, such miseries deepen and are passed down from one generation to another. Larkin tries to advise people that the only solution to ending these miseries is leaving home and not having children.

Larkin uses a strong opening phrase that sparks diverse emotions among the audience, where he says, “They fuck you up” (Larkin 1 This be the Verse).” This phrase caught my attention because it is not common for a speaker to use such a strong expletive in expressing his or her feeling. To do so, he must have been driven by sadness.

The poem reveals sad emotions, and this can be seen from the words used by the speaker in the poem. According to him, being alive is like being miserable because one is expected to live according to the expectations of the parents, but that is not their flaw because they inherited that from their parents. The speaker is agitated to the extent that he says that the only way to end this misery is to leave and not have children. He says, “Get out as early as you can, / And don’t have any kids yourself” (Larkin 11,12 This be the Verse)” At the beginning of the poem, the speaker also uses an expletive “fuck up ” (Larkin 1) to show how sad he is and how he disagrees with parents passing flaws to their children.

The poem tells us that at home and more so in a family, parents may influence have a negative influence by passing their flaws to their children and expect them to behave just like them. However, these flaws are inevitable because they acquired them from their parents. This cycle can be stopped by not having children, as the speaker puts it.