An Analysis of The Building Essay -- The Building

An Analysis of The Building   Larkin put The Building in the middle of his charm for a reason, it is a pillar that supports the rest of the collection with its long lines and many verses, and because of this, is maybe a bit more cle atomic number 18r than some of his other poems in the ideas and views that are expressed through it. Of course, being a Larkin a poem, there is the obligatory underlayer which so many people miss, but in The Building it is easier to discern and compreh eat up. The ennoble of the poem, The Building already hints at the main theme of the poem. The word building is a very vague term and in its vagueness one can polish off out the fright of the author for this building, he cannot specify that it is a hospital as if not saying the word will make it go away. At the same time in this poem, Larkin makes out the hospital as the real world, everything around it is fake so that the word building is put in occupation to his view of what it really is. Th e poem starts in this indistinct manner and moves onto a much more definite reality death. The first thing we discover virtually the building is the way it dominates the authors view, of all buildings he can see it is the tallest, it shows up for miles. Although he doesnt want to know what it is, it dominates his view and his destiny - all men and women end up in the hospital before they die, and there is that sense again, of Larkins fear of death. He sees that the hospital is the real life, all else is false, you delude yourself all your life close to death, pretending that it doesnt exist yet when you get in the hospital you finally have to face the truth. He names the places he would like it to be a hotel, an airport lounge, a bus, but he can no longer d... ... to die. Not yet, perhaps not here, but in the end, And somewhere like this. As in most of his poems, he starts with a fear of something, in this case death but comes to realise later on that in fact it is notwithstandi ng an inevitable part of life. And he also comes to understand that if people werent so scared of death than life would be less valued as he hints to in the last part of the poem ...a struggle to transcend The thought of dying, for unless its powers Outbuild cathedrals nothing contravenes... The poem ends disturbingly with With wasteful, weak, propitiatory flowers. The structure of the poem with nine verses of six-spot lines adds up to 63, but that last odd line makes it more regular, it makes 64 which suggests 8x8, so that the last line might seem a bit minute and odd but it also completes the poem (and also the rhyme scheme).