Ambulances

Theme:

Larkin describes how death is inevitable and lonely, and how it defines humans because they can not escape it, a pessimistic view of life. The poem is about mankind's fight against death, desperate and frantic. 

Content:

The poem is about a street where an ambulance has been called and everyone has come to see the scene, watching the body being taken away. 

Structure:

The rhyme scheme for this poem: ABCBCA shows the cyclical motion of life, how it starts and ends and in the middle there is just the repetition of surviving.

Analysis:

• The title 'Ambulances' is seen not for the potential joys of the world like births but instead for emergencies, injuries and death. People try to be saved, to avoid death and seeing an ambulance is like a reminder of mortality.
• 'Closed like confessionals' - a paradox that is also a simile and alliteration suggests that you can be private but also confess, confessionals whisper and are quiet but still talk. The confessionals is then contrasted on the next line by 'loud'.
• 'None of the glances they absorb' - the ambulances only receive glances, noticed momentarily. 
• 'Light glossy grey, arms on plaque' - the symbol of the local hospital, plain and boring, dull, lifeless. 
• 'All the streets in time are visited' - can happen at anytime to anyone, inevitable, comes eventually and can't escape it 
• 'Children strewn' and 'women coming from the shops' shows that people are intrigued to see the event, spectators, interested, death interrupts life, the young are up close to death even though they are the opposite sides to life
• 'Wild white' - alliteration that makes the dead people sound dangerous and feral but suggests death and lifeless
• 'Carried in and stowed' - treated like objects/baggage, uncared for, no one pays attention to who, just an ominous figure, dehumanises person
• 'Emptiness that lies just under' - buried bodies and death is underneath us all, lying close to life though it is forgotten until it's reminded by an ambulance
• 'For a second get it whole' - death comes all at once, suddenly
• 'Permanent and blank and true' - death is inescapable and there is an empty ending, it's the reality to life and we can't pretend it's not there
• 'Poor soul, they whisper at their own distress' - morality, the others thank it wasn't them but also a realisation they could be next
• 'Borne away' - an oxymoron (born and dead)
• 'Deadened air' - vacuum, silent, no life, a pun on dead end, the cycle of life
• 'Sudden shut of loss' - closure by surprise
• 'Unique random blend of families and fashions' - combination to make an identity, everyone must be different but everyone is affected so they become the same. These differences 'begin to loosen' so they become the same dead decaying body
• 'Love to lie' - love is dead, the truth/reality is ambigious
• 'Unreachable inside a room' - confined by unreachable, like in a morgue
• 'Left to come' - a death phrase
• 'Dulls to distance' - people become boring and insignificant