Larkin’s Portrayal of Place in "I Remember, I Remember" and "Places, Loved Ones" Anonymous 12th Grade

Philip Larkin’s wrote his collection of poems The Less Deceived in 1955, and it became a work which garnered him public recognition. His poems often include a deep sense of his feelings of inadequacy and contain his view that he did not belong within society or at least that he never fulfilled the requirements of society’s expectations. As a consequence of this his works often contain a melancholic and negative mood. An example of Larkin not meeting the expectations of society can be found in the fact that he never felt that he belonged in a specific place, this view is expressed in his two poems, I "Remember, I Remember" and "Places, Loved Ones.:

The poem "I Remember, I Remember: portrays the physical journey of Larkin on a train where he passes through the place in which he was born, Coventry. This is shown by the lexical choice of the word “line” in the opening of the poem and the later reference to a “whistle” both of which have connotations with the railway environment. Despite this journey to his place of origin Larkin is revealed to be just stopping in an unmoving train to some other unspecified destination. This shows his lack of attachment to the location of his birth, throughout the whole transience of the poem he...