Afternoons

Theme: 

The poem talks about the meaning of life, time, love and the reality of life vs expectations. Things age in the poem.

Content:

Larkin paints a picture of life on an estate, and the people that live there (working class families). His opinion can be seen as snobbish and judgemental, but also sympathetic and nostalgia. The adults in the poem have children that are growing up, new generations moving on and they need to do the same but can't remain that this point in life (the high point of midday/summer) and must move into autumn/afternoon.

Analysis:

• 'Afternoon' is the non event/intermission between morning and evening, neither the start of the day or the end. 'Summer is fading' that happiness is passing, light is going and autumn will come which shows the decay and decline, darkness and a more bleak, negative mood that will turn into the winter depression. The era is ending.
• Larkin uses pathetic fallacy to describe autumn, 'leaves fall in ones and twos' a gradual change, unnoticed.
• The 'hollows of afternoons' - empty, bored, aimless
• 'Trees bordering' trapping, a natural fence that confides these people to their lifestyle
• 'New recreation ground' shows that the children used to play on the streets and have a new area to have fun
• Larkin also creates a difference in people, the 'young mothers assemble', routine yet unplanned, organised to look after the children.
• 'Setting free their children' implies that they were previously trapped, stuck, restricted and now have the freedom, to grow up and become independent. Their life is a routine and they have no freedom. This could be seen as being set free from a prison, relief and freedom or from a zoo, chaos and feral.
• The 'husbands in skilled trades' implies they are upper working class, a common background that is respectful. The men are more important, work for money and have authority that splits them from the family.
• 'Behind them, before them' at the start and second last line of the second stanza implies the women are trapped in between.
• 'Near the television' suggests TV is more important than the wedding albums, uncared for and the materialistic/techonological items replace the memories
• 'The wind' is an invisible destructive force, like time. The decay of their early lives begin.
• 'The lovers are all in school' implies they are still learning, naive and don't understand.
• The children find 'unripe acorns' like themselves
• 'Their beauty has thickened' implies that time enforces things, and makes them stronger, the mothers are less attractive (fatter) and the children are getting older
• 'Something is pushing them to the side of their own lives', time is pushing them, that things are based upon importance and the children become the priority which makes the adults selfless. There is expectations, the social class, lack of money that trap the working class and the parents trap the children.