[544] Toads
My turn to contribute to the theme:
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.
Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losers, loblolly-men, louts-
They don't end as paupers;
Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
They seem to like it.
Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually _starves_.
Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout, Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:
For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,
And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.
I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.
-- Philip Larkin
|
A typical Larkin poem: dry and to the point, it echoes the quiet desperation
which infuses much of his work. The comparison between the two toads of the
title [1] - the sickening poison of the toad 'work', and the lack of courage of
his own baser self - is not overdone at all; instead, Larkin's matter-of-fact
tone reinforces the sense he is trying to convey.
thomas.
[1] Alliteration watch!
[Assessment]
" ... Philip Larkin is the poet of the emotionally underprivileged. He speaks
for the vast majority of people, for whom life is a series of successive
disillusionments. His poetic personae are invariably unprepossessing - the man
with bicycle clips on his trousers, sitting in an empty church; the outsider,
looking in on the merrymaking of other people; the traveler who has (both
literally and figuratively) missed the boat. Yet if we describe his subject as
being 'the short end of the stick', all we can say is that he has a firm grasp
of it; like Thomas Hardy (one of his early influences), he is an intelligent
skeptic, rather than a shallow cynic or a bitter loser.
Larkin's distaste for the spectacular extends itself to the _manner_ of his
poetry; his verse exhibits the same precision and clarity as does that of Yeats.
His relatively small poetic output reflects his sense of balance and his
attention to detail... "
-- Gary Geddes, 20th Century Poetry and Poetics
(The above paragraphs are from memory, so they're not verbatim. The overall
sense is correct, though - t.).
From: Sunil Iyengar <sriyengar@>
Hi Abraham,
I've always been uncomfortable with the last stanza; what do you suppose the
"both" of the last line is referring to?
(I have some ideas.)
Sunil
From: jen <jen.st@>
Hello,
I am studying this poem and at a loss.
I am wondering if you can point out the technical aspects, the
mechanics, literary devices, and images in this poem.
Thanks, Jennifer
From: "Paul Schwiesow" <pauls@>
Hi --
You write in http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/544.html:
I've always been uncomfortable with the last stanza; what do you suppose the
"both" of the last line is referring to? (I have some ideas.) Sunil
I've been searching for answers to this one, too. I like the interpretation
earlier on this page:
The comparison between the two toads of the title [1] - the sickening poison
of the toad 'work', and the lack of courage of his own baser self . . .
So, according to this reading, the last stanza:
I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.
Might be read as something like:
I don't say that the crappiness of my needing to work is balanced out by my
lack of courage in failing to find a more noble and less soul-stultifying
way of keeping body and soul together, like, say, coming up with the idea
for Post-it notes, or the personal computer. Or, say, making a living from
writing poetry. I'm not at peace with this set-up. But there it is --
work's a toad, and I'm a coward, and since work won't get better and I'm too
chicken to go it alone, I'm stuck.
Paul Schwiesow
Instructional Designer
DigitalMeD
303-245-1010, ext. 128
pauls@
From: "Michelle Egan" <shells1206@>
I think the last two lines are talking more about how if you had only
had the bad work and not the fear about quitting, you could change your
situation and have the freedom to do what you want. Or if you had the
good luck of already having that freedom but still have lack courage, it
wouldn't matter because you would never have to change you job. However
the man in the poem has both. He has job he hates and not enough courage
to quit and his desire to quit is out weighed by the strenghth he has to
do something about it.
From: "Michelle Egan" <shells1206@>
I think the last two lines are talking more about how if you had only
had the bad work and not the fear about quitting, you could change your
situation and have the freedom to do what you want. Or if you had the
good luck of already having that freedom but still have lack courage, it
wouldn't matter because you would never have to change you job. However
the man in the poem has both. He has job he hates and not enough courage
to quit and his desire to quit is out weighed by the strenghth he has to
do something about it.
From: "99halimefarrah" <99halimefarrah@>
what is this poem about? does anybody know? is there anybody out there?
HELP!
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From: hamerton <hamerton13@>
HI.
im studying this poem as well and i was wondering if you could help me too.i hoping that you got help from someone else. anything will be helpful...thanks
From: MrkPdly@
What is this poem all about. I interpret it as being about someone who is
working for a living and not enjoying it. Toads Revisited is another poem I
need to study and I think this is about the same man once he has retired. Am I
anywhere near the right track
Kate Pedley
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?melek=20bulut?= <me_l_ek@>
HELP!!!!!
I am studying those poems TOAD and TOADS REVISITED by Philip Larkin. I was wondering if you could help me too. I need the
mechanics, literary devices, and images in the poems. And I need to compare them, what is equal and what is different? What is the message of those poems? PLEASE HELP!! I need the answers quickly.
thanks so much, melek ;o)
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From: "Julian Archer" <jarcher@>
It's not "losers", it's "losels": look it up.
From: "Julian Archer" <jarcher@>
And "my way to getting", not "of getting"; poor old Larkinn must be
turning in his grave...