'Compare the ways in which Philip Larkin and Carol Ann Duffy present the theme of death and its implications on life\r'

'The judgment of final examination stage and its implications ar explored extensively by Larkin and Duffy, both poets agreeing that the destructive attrisolelye of prohibiting makes void of altogether the duration and motion we invest in keep snip. Larkin seems to evince a c previous(a) fear towards this inevitableness by distancing himself from the man in ‘Ambulances’ and ‘Dockery and interrupt-and- outlet’, choosing to make resigned entirely philosophical points on the subject.\r\nDuffy, by production guide, invests in a farthermost more(prenominal) stimulated approach and suggests how the finality drive f solely out bring a contrasted horse good sense experience of ease amidst the devastation; this is exhibit in the poems ‘The suicide’ and ‘ neer Go Back’ whither the fictional char stageers vow to never rec entirely their termin onlyy determines again, and, in the content of ‘The sui cide’ in cleaveicular, utilization close as a fashion to exact revenge. ‘Ambulances’ atomic number 18 listd as vehicles that both literally transport the dying, and are the anthropomorphised psychopomps who help make water the transitory stage between aliveness and final stage.\r\nThe fairly archaic yet idiomatic verb phrase ‘borne away’ and the aim of find modifiers in ‘ either kerb: / each streets’ suggests that remnant is a ubiquitous and apparitional presence that transc stops duration and takes careerspan indiscriminately. Thus, Larkin hands a grave mood and an aloof tincture which suggests the easy dissolution of identity and temper in the face of demise. Duffy besides presents the eccentric of conclusion in ‘The felo-de-se’, except un deal Larkin’s distance, the persona here takes go into across with the modal auxiliary in ‘I exit keep open’ and demands light from their attempted suicide: ‘Famous. The delivery as an ablaze dramatic monologue helps serve up the vocalizer system’s appeal to victimhood, as they use a bitter and more and more spiteful t hotshot to justify their flagitious sin of ‘despair’. This cry for prudence gum olibanum suggests the instinctive egoism of humans, such(prenominal) same the bystanders in ‘Ambulances’ who, scorn witnessing a tragedy, ‘whisper at their sustain hurt’. In contrast, finale in ‘Dockery and give-and-take’ incites abstract m utilizes on the meaning of biography and ties Larkin’s autobiographical account of be the memorial service of an old college acquaintance.What is the resideder between a figurative and a literal analogy?\r\nThe poem is introduced in medias res, ‘Dockery was junior to you..? ’ but the disinte take a brea in that locationd verbaliser quickly dissolves into a nostalgic fantasy a s he explores the fata totalic reality that is often followed after expiration. The overleap of solace in dungeon is exhibit when Larkin attempts to coming back his chivalric and ‘tries the door of where I apply to live’, but finds it ‘Locked’; the finality in the modifier symbolises how the verbalizer is unable to return to a preceding(a) that no long exists, and indeed system estranged from the familiarity of the past. never Go Back’ develops on this topic further since it follows the journey of a vocalizer who revisits her old haunts after the end of her failed marriage. Death, here, is utilise as an extended illustration, in contrast with Dockery’s literal shoemakers last, but this withal establishes a period of mourning and self-reflection as she is existence transported by ‘a political hack implying a herse’.\r\nHowever, the persona suggests in that location is roughly consolation in life since she i s ‘released’ by the past, the verb shakeing connotations of the relief and freedom gained in knowledgeable that the past no longer exists, whereas Larkin’s resignation towards life in unplayful lines such as, ‘Whether or not we use it, it goes’, suggests Dockery’s shoemakers last to be more of a call to take depot of his life and consequently suggests it to be the get down of the end. ‘Ambulances’ invites us to the cerebration that remainder is a private experience but this sense of intimacy bum be jerry-built as it opens with the simile ‘closed like confessionals’.\r\nThe sinister religious connotations suggest how the jerky belief in conclusion has the efficiency to invoke regret as one realises the significance of their life; the narrator thence suggests that there is a need for quiet at this personal revelation as he attributes the ambulance with a spectral grapheme by the dynamic verb ‘thre ad’, arouse grasps of the Moirae and their threads of mickle, and frankincense constructing the image of the ‘ relations’ as being the fabricated be given of eon.\r\nHowever, the persona re headsprings us that death is a definite reality as he eerily juxtaposes it against y come forwardhful innocence with ‘children strewn on steps or roads’. The verisimilitude of the general urban sight overly grants death a recognisable status, but at the same, Larkin demonstrates how death is inscrutable via the symbol of the ambulance: ‘ well-favoured back none of the glances they absorb’, presenting the ambulance, and therefore, death as a mystery which provides no answers.\r\nSimilarly, ‘The Suicide’ provides as an example of how death can be cryptic as the persona presents a gothic scene breathlessly. The irregularly long theory line coupled with the pathetic phantasm in ‘bitter moon’ and ‘smudgy cloudsâ⠂¬â„¢ conveys the speakers ramble sapidity and her disorganised state of mind as she appears to plan her own death. These imagined, airy characters provide a jibe with her emotional reality through the repeated vowel and consonant sounds in ‘gleam’ and ‘ mirthfulness’, thus drawing attention to the sandwiched non-sequitur of ‘I dress in a shroud. The see caesurae and the ending rhyme ‘me’ suggests she is preparing for and welcoming her death, a stark contrast with the ‘ambulances’ which ‘come to rest at any kerb’ and are the intruders that disturb the normality of normal life. The quieten universality of life is also deficient in ‘The Suicide’, as the persona twists images of innocence such as with the modifier in ‘the horrid smiling mouths’, and conveys her contempt, such(prenominal) like the case of betrayal by her loved one.\r\nDuffy thus attempts to establish a personal rel ationship with death which is arguably seen as abnormal, whereas Larkin suggests that it is perfectly acceptable for death to transcend life and for our understanding of it to remain little. Larkin’s ‘Ambulances’ continues its cool narration which helps create an ironic quality to the scene when the speaker suddenly launches into the description of death in the second stanza, all whilst sustaining the organised poetry form.\r\nLife is seen to quickly dissolve into the image of the ‘wild white face atop red stretcher bloodlessets’, the elongated load of the alliteration serving as the further definite point of transition. Otherwise, the face isn’t given any attention as ‘it is carried in and stowed’, the pronoun ‘it’ dehumanising the person and the use of verbs which carry connotations of luggage also demonstrates how our bodies are still perceived as vessels for our souls, and that without them, we are powerless .\r\nThe witnesses, ie the children and women, show to have realised this reality. The epiphany delivered easily in ‘And sense the solving conceit’ uses the present continuous to suggest that this experience is universal, but the delivery in quell sibilance conveys the hushed voice of the speaker as he establishes the event as a quiet memento mori. The obscurity thus suggests the unwillingness of facing the realisation that everything is wasted in the face of death.\r\nThis is further demonstrated by the polysyndetic listing of ‘so snowy and whole and true’, each adjectival stressed as the persona makes an effort to capture the heartbeat of realisation in advance it is lost. Paradoxically, these fatalistic descriptions also carry a sense of nihilism and indifference as Larkin here chillingly injects realism into the scene when he remind us of how we lose our homo in death. Power and identity are also recurring ideas in ‘The Suicide’ a s Duffy’s persona realises that death is a means of achieving credit rating and establishing control when she feels trapped and isolated by life.\r\nThis is denoted by the speaker declaring ‘my consistence is a blank page I will write on’; the modal verb ‘will’ and the syllabic lexis conveys the persona’s certain tone as she describes how her romantic notion of death will take into account a acquit message for the intended left(p) behind. Similarly, Larkin also shows how death can leave revelations for those left behind, except Duffy here provides a particular(prenominal) example with the possessive determiner in ‘my body’.\r\nThe use of the personal locating conveys the speakers isolation which is reiterated by the repeated syntactical structure of ‘Nobody’; this suggests her lack of recognition in life and how the preservation of it, ‘eye in the glass like squids’, is deemed unnatural which is mirrored by the sardonic ‘ steamy’ that summarises the simile. By comparison, both poets indicate that death is a natural state collect to the futility in living except Larkin suggests that this is a sudden realisation whereas Duffy demonstrates how the drawn-out angst of death is felt on the condition of being alive.\r\nThe outer enclosed rhymes that contains the intertwining rhymes in ‘Ambulances’, such as the passive-sounding ‘air’ and ‘there’, captures Larkin’s conclusion of how death is the inevitable fate that overshadows our lives. The harsh sibilance in ‘the sudden keep out of disadvantage’ conveys the finality of the end but this ending remains dynamic, as the assonance invokes the sighing sound of the narrator as his thick of life, ‘unique blend of families and fashions’ is chased into the final verse where it is unravelled, the dynamism evoking the sense of perseverance of time.\r\nT he noun phrase ‘exchange of love’ denotes how life is a contractual obligation but is only temporary as the endgame is ‘to lie unreachable inside a room’ which inculpates the undeniable loneliness in death. However, Larkin persists in remaining unnoticeable as he describes death with the euphemism ‘what is left to come’, thus establishing how death remains as an unspoken truth in society. Similarly, Duffy shows how the concept of death governs people in ‘The Suicide’ where the persona’s increasingly vindictive mood culminates into unrepentantly spitting out imperatives to the readers: ‘Fuck off. Worship. ’\r\nThe speaker here shows an sense of the readers’ voyeurism who are compelled to follow her path to self-annihilation and watch her play god as she ‘lies under the lightbulb’, literally suggesting the motion picture to truth and figuratively transportation a sensual submission to her ‘lightbulb’ split second of self-inflicted death. However, we see the persona’s enchantment is to the point of delusion. The dismissive tone and metaphor for life in ‘Who wants / a damn valentine pumping its love hate love? smuggler by the deviantly collocated ‘bloody’ alongside the iambic dimeter, attributes the sound of two heartbeats to her confused valentine’s ‘love hate love’. Duffy thus suggests that reflecting over the fragility of life can drive a person to craziness and, as Larkin suggests, there is a nonprogressive view that promotes the secrecy of death, indicating how people fearfully deny death in their lives callable to its ability to expose human tenuity which may be seen as an ill at ease(predicate) consequence of death.\r\nStructurally, Duffys haphazardly contained verses and the speakers punning cliches such as ‘I take out the knives’ create a more good cognisance of death as somethin g looked for and desirable, whereas Larkin’s standardised verses convey his reliable but frigid outlook on the subject. ‘Ambulances’ indicates that death is a passive presence; the emit alliteration in ‘dulls to distance all we are’ and the collective pronoun ‘we’ concluded that death is the unavoidable fate universal to all of us and, that in death, we are all equal.\r\nLikewise, ‘The Suicide’ reflects how death can leave a resounding impact except, specifically, death’s legacy can be a notoriety caused by the finis to unnaturally decide your own death, alternatively of letting it take you, as suggested in ‘Ambulances’. The shocking irony in ‘This will kill my folks’ thus suggests how death can become an act act of spite when we wilfully plot our own demise kind of of allowing death to take its own course. Larkin’s ‘Dockery and tidings’ suggests there is a sense of te diousness in death rituals as the persona of a sudden castrates off the Dean in the opening lines of the poem with a heavy caesura.\r\nInstead, he teases the readers with reminisces of ‘our version’ of the mischief he in additionk part in with friends in the past. This emotional onanism from his old acquaintance’s death is defended by the transitive modifier ‘ visitor’, proposing his apathy is appropriate with the neologism ‘death-suited’. This avoidance of the death is further demonstrated by focusing on the comforting familiarity of the surround: ‘A known bell chimes’. However, this comfort remains unreachable, announced by the speaker with the modifier ‘Locked’ as he revisits his old halls of residence.\r\nThe polysyndeton in ‘Canal and clouds and colleges subside easy from view’ support the adverb ‘slowly’ as Larkin illustrates this gradual passing of time and how the thaumatu rgy can make one swallow up that life is limited, the persona thus covering how the event of death can promote us to want to revisit the past. In ‘ neer Go Back’, the speaker similarly explores the relationship between time and death, except here, death is used as a metaphor to describe prejudice as time itself is personified ‘left yen till it died’.\r\nDuffy thus suggests the human want to enjoy more of life before death takes us, whereas Larkin’s numerical references to time ‘’43’, ‘twenty-one’ quantifies life and suggests a more practical view on the finiteness of time. The persona likewise revisits the past after the end of her marriage, as the level begins with the familiar scene of ‘where the living bushed(p) drink all day’, the oxymoron ‘living dead’ indicating how people live unsuccessful lives while the hard alliteration delivers a heavy droning sound that lends a mechanical q uality to the scene.\r\nThis conveys a sense of disillusionment with the social activities she used to enjoy, in contrast with ‘Dockery and Son’, where the speaker recalls the past with nostalgic reverence as he anecdotally reveals how Dockery used to share ‘rooms with Cartwright who was killed’. both poets therefore demonstrate how death and passing play can trigger retrospections of the past, Duffy arguing for the case of pain and abandonment in loss with the image of ‘a limping hotdog’, whereas Larkin avoids such sentiments with the trailing ellipsis in ‘How much . . How little . . . ’, the unfinished thoughts enacting Duffy’s convincing view on how the beat out emotional response to death is to ‘never go back. ’ The persona in ‘Dockery and Son’ begins to show an knowingness of how life is lastly a journey towards the final terminus of death. The train station used symbolically as ‘the joining and parting lines’ similarly imply the different crossroads actual in life and how companionship allows our roads to briefly overlap.\r\nHowever, the antithesis of the nouns ‘numbness’ and ‘shock’ suggests there is a sense of confusion when the speaker draws comparisons between Dockery’s accomplishments and his own, and ponders on the moment he strayed ‘widely from the others’. Therefore, the syndetic list of repeated ostracizes ‘no son, no wife, no tin or land’ should depict the speaker’s failure of attaining any adult achievement, yet the nonchalance in ‘still seemed quite natural’ suggests that Larkin hadnt quite moved on from his time in university, the adverb ‘still’ indicating the speakers struggle to come to legal injury with ageing and the flow of time.\r\nThere is thus a sense of dread when Larkin contemplates the ‘ toilsome unhindered moon’; the path etic fallacy suggests the feebleness in differentiating our individual lifelines since we are all doomed to the ‘only end of age’, the adverb ‘only’ stressing the absoluteness and lack of choice in death.\r\nDuffy’s ‘Never Go Back’ also demonstrates an emotional resignation to the choices made as ‘the house’, which personifies the past, ‘prefers to be left alone’ amidst the evoke images of death; the verb ‘prefers’ suggests it has no intention of retrieve from the metaphorical ‘cancer’ which spoils the glowing keeping of it being ‘where you were one of the brides’. The house instead reprimands the persona with ‘You shouldnt be here’, the negative modal verb ‘shouldnt’ warning against the attempt to fall with the past.\r\nThe speaker is thus unable to piercingly ruminate the past and abstains from comparing her life to others, ie her ex-husband , alternatively, allowing ‘objects’ (which pertain to the past) to symbolise life itself, and demonstrates how they can symbolically ‘fill a room with pain’ after the end of their use. This passiveness of the persona is also absentminded in ‘Dockery and Son’, where Larkin intentionally uses Dockery’s death as a means to appraise the value of his own life.\r\nRather, the use of the second person narrative in ‘Never Go Back’ becomes increasingly significant as the speaker captures the kill quality of death, recreating the past through syntactic parallelism in ‘all the lies . . . and all the cries’, and the soft assonance in the natural image of ‘draw your loved body in blurred air’ conveying this ghostly effect as Duffy places the readers in closer proximity to death. Comparatively using the first person perspective, the speaker in ‘Dockery and Son’ is more prone to stoop from Dockery s unfortunate death and instead focuses on the bleakness of the mundane: ‘And ate an dreaded pie’.\r\nTherefore, both poets present life as a journey that is met with death, yet Larkin demonstrates how death can be used comparatively when we realise our own expiration watch and consider the wider meaning of our lives, whereas Duffy indicates how grief can distort the past and how this can, in effect, emotionally paralyse a person. ‘Dockery and Son’ begins with a simplistic but regular alter rhyme scheme which suits Larkin’s familiarity with his alma mater.\r\nThe ravisher fall of sounds such as ‘give’ and ‘live’ capture the persona’s feelings of bittersweet nostalgia but this gradually evolves until the final syntactical structure of ABBCADDC, which creates the suitably gruelling texture demanded, as Larkin moves from describing his literal purlieu to attributing philosophical thoughts to death’s interpr etation of life. The speaker derogatorily muses that our acquisitions arent as valuable as societys ‘innate assumptions’ perceive them to be, since they are superficially denounced as a ‘style’ that tragically ‘harden into all we’ve got’.\r\nThere is thus a sense of futility in life inspired by the news of a young man’s death, as Larkin concludes that even our choices are obscurely refractory by ‘something hidden from us chose’, the vague pronoun ‘something’ suggesting how the workings of life is beyond our recognition while death remains a certainty that levels everyone in callable time. ‘Never Go Back’ similarly concludes with the idea that life is governed by a dark entity, except here, it is explicitly denoted as avariciousness and human desire.\r\nThe crude images of the ‘sly sums of bills’ and ‘a drenched whore’ connote a sense of the decay and degression prepare in society’s unmistakable hedonism. This enables death to run in parallel with life, as even the associated taxi number one wood is described by the cliche ‘looks like death’. Ironically, the speaker demonstrates how this illusion of life, and its sour evolution, allows possibilities to remain open; the hollow sounds in the pronoun ‘nowhere’ and neologism ‘nowhen’ dissolves the significance of time and space, and instead grants importance to the present by the homely image of ‘the fires and lights come on wherever you live’.\r\nBy comparison, Larkin suggests a sense of entrapment by the facade as ‘what we think truest . . . warp tight-shut’; the harsh syllables in the modifier ‘tight-shut’ elicit a sense of urgency as the speaker realises he is running out of time to achieve what he wishes, yet the possibilities remain cut off in ‘Dockery and Son’ due to the speaker’ s acute awareness of death. In conclusion, Larkin and Duffy both demonstrate the ubiquity of death in our lives.\r\nLarkin uses his unassuming observations to describe death as an inescapable voice of everyday life, thus suggesting that his point of prudence in ‘Dockery and Son’ marks too as a pessimistic stock of the end. Duffy chooses to manifest death in everyday components of life, normalising death, and instead, offers the view in ‘Never Go Back’ that death provides a come about to understand that the past is gone, and also as a catalyst for hopeful beginnings. However, despite these contrarian views, both poets agree that death remains the undeniable ending to our lives\r\n'