Where is the Church Going? A Look at Philip Larkin’s

Where is the church building discharge? A Look at Philip Larkins Church Going          Philip Larkins metrical composition Church Going is one of make do; there is a debate inseparable to the poem in that, as much as the fabricator wants to dismiss all the custom and ritual involved with overtalikeg to perform, he squirtnot dismiss the church building building itself he cannot dismiss, nor can he explain, the feeling it gives him. A debate in addition seems to exist amidst the poet and the persona he has created in the poem; on the climb up Church Going seems critical of the irrationality of righteousness, yet it also hints that certain changes in society -- the elimination of tradition, and the death of sincerity might not be an essentially positive thing. Larkin sees the fate of church discharge, and wonders what the world leave behind be like when the churches throw away been abandoned, when feel itself has been abandoned. Philip Larkin employs many tools in his meandering contemplations of the prospective of the church, churches and church deviation, but Larkins main weapons in this poem, as advantageously as most of his others, ar irony and satire. Larkins cynicism, brain and wit, combined with his bleak and dreary imagery, give the poem a genuinely dark and very English feeling.

         Larkin goes to some length to characterize his storyteller, and this narrator doesnt seem a liable(predicate) candidate to be philosophizing on the after disembodied spirit of religion. A cyclist, the narrator is not properly attired to be going to church. Hatless, [he] takes off his cycle-clips in awkward reverence (8-9); although this quote exposes a certain inappropriateness in the speaker, it ironically lends towards the narrators qualifications as well; removing his cycle-clips is an act of respect although undoubtedly a strange and whimsical one. The characters dualism continues in his exposition of the churchs interior; he can severalize most of the sacramental objects within it, which lends to his credentials, but some of his descriptions of them be satirical; he calls the hymnals little books (4), and refers to the altar as the hallowed end (6). He further satirizes the church in his overly solemn imitation of a service; he preaches to the muster out live Here endeth (15).

        The narrators description of the mountain is bleak, and leads to a feeling of emptiness; moreover, this emptiness seems not serious a physical emptiness, but also a uncanny emptiness in the church, in religion and in society. reclaim from the start of the poem where the speaker proclaims that there is nothing going on (1), and as the door thud[s] (2) shut, this emptiness is implied. The building is demoralize of signs of life; dead flowers cut / for Sunday, brownish now (4-5), efficaciously illustrate this. And [the] tense, musty, unignorable silence, / [that] Brewed God knows how long (7-8), is exactly broken when the narrators shout of Here endeth (15) bounces off the walls. This nullify room exposes itself as wholly unmystical, and the narrator reflects that it was not worth fish fillet for (18). He donates an Irish sixpence as he leaves; this is an empty gesture, and a very British allusion, as an Irish sixpence is worthless.

        The opening scene of this poem is not completely worthless, however, as it provides the context for the reflections that top up the body of the poem. The speaker contemplates the future of churches, wondering if some will become like museums; A few cathedrals chronically on show (24). In this he is mocking the antiquity of religious belief and custom, which he goes on to compare to simple superstition. He asks if when churches become abandoned will they come to be known as unlucky places (27); or will they become magic places, where dubious women come / To make their children touch a particular stone; [and] pick simples for crabby person (28-30). The text points out that simples are medicinal herbs, but the intension of the word simple is that of simple-minded; the narrator is comparing religion to superstition, and that church goers, like all people that believe in superstitions, are stupid. Larkin likens churches to haunted crime syndicates, places where you go on an advised darkness to see a walking dead one (31); church goers believe in a Holy Ghost, and go to devotion it on an advised day. however the narrator holds that superstition and belief will fade, and wonders what will become of churches when that is the case.

        The narrator changes course, as he wonders not or so the future of churches themselves, but begins to consider the future of the practice of church going. The speaker asks: as a church crumbles into ruins, and the purpose (38) of these ruins grows more obscure (38), who will be the sustain people to go to these places the last church goers? The poems scrolls through a list of options: historians, antique collectors, Christmas-addict[s] (43) looking for mementos, or someone akin to the narrator himself, bored [and] uniformed (46), yet interested in the church for deeper reasons than its his history or its paraphernalia.



The narrator is interested in the church for what it once represented: marriage, and birth, / And death (50-51).

         In his speculations on the church, the narrator disarms himself of his own skepticism, and comes to some realizations of a churchs necessity. He looks upon the church as a serious house on a serious earth (55), and even in a society where seriousness and belief are on the decline a society, which he is a fair vocalism of the purpose of the church can never be obsolescent (58). The essential function of church is best expressed in the poem itself: Since someone will forever be surprise A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard was proper to grow wise in, If only that so many dead lie around (59-63).

This is in no way an affirmation of the Christian faith, but of the church as an important place to meditate on lifes unanswerable mysteries a house of metaphysical thought. But even in this concession of the importance of churches Larkin takes one more stab at church going: that people are sitting around growing wise until they die.

        That is the nature of the unit of measurement poem; it is conflicted, struggling against itself. Larkins narrator has a sensible and merited cynicism about the role of the church in society, and is very skeptical about the future of churches; yet he cant fully dismiss them. Larkin is looking for answers about himself, about his existence, and as the poem evolves it turns from a satirical dismissal of church, to an affirmation of a churchs role as a place of silent contemplation. It lures the skeptical reader in -- with cynical humour, laced with satire and irony -- and then in a moment of epiphany dismisses that skeptism and persuades the reader to admit that the church has some legitimacy. This poem answers no questions, but instead sparks debate; often debate with ones self, in that it is so effective in cutting the church down, satirizing it throughout the poem and presenting a very bleak likeness of it, that when it finally presents the church as a viable place of meditation, you dont know what to think.

Bibliography Larkin, Philip. Church Going. in The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Vol.         2C The Twentieth Century 2nd ed. Kevin Dettmar and Jennifer Wicke, eds. saucily         York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc., 2002. 2805-2806.

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