Skip to main content

Analysis of Take one Home for the Kiddies

Synopsis= The poem regards the temporary nature of pets and the devaluation of life by children perhaps due to their inexperience with death. It is whether or not the parents are to blame in buying the pet for the children perhaps regarding working class negligence. Larkin appears to subvert the usual attitudes towards the innocence of children as he bands children as heartless and violent. 

 Key Quotations + Analysis 
1.) "Take on home for the kiddies"

  • "Take"= suggests the unnatural action of ownership over pets and the willingness people have to remove them from their natural habitat
  • "One" furthers the ideals of lacking individuality as the poem never specifies the animal showing the lack of importance branded to the pets
  • "Kiddies" suggests the commercialisation of life not only the lives of children but also of their pets. 

2.) "Mam get us one of them"

  • Colloquial language, Larkins use of the colloquial "mam" could show a criticism of the working class by Larkin of the neglectful attitudes towards their children and the pets. 
  • Also shows that the children do not comprehend the value of having a pet, this is reinforced with the phrase "one of them" as it shows that the children don't care what pet is chosen. Personifies the animals as toys that the children want to play with, and eventually over time will get bored with. 
3.) "Living toys"
  • Lexical choice "toys" emphasises the lack of significance given to the animals as temporary characters in the children's playing. 
  • Toys are inanimate which is heavily contrasted with the word choice "living", this juxtaposition highlights the mistreatment of animals who are living creatures and deserves to be treated with more value than a "toy". 
4.) "Fetch the shoebox, fetch the shovel"
  • Nonchalant attitude towards the death of their pets, further accentuated using the colloquial verb "fetch" which implies that their deaths are followed by with little thought and recollection by the children. 
5.) "Mam, we're playing funerals now" 
  • The verb choice "playing" shows that the children at no point separated themselves from their juvenile attitude towards life and even in death it only acts to further their games. 
  • It would appear that the poem debates the morality of having a pet and whether or not that the children can be assigned as apathetic and violent if they lack the knowledge to comprehend their actions. This is supported by this line as "playing funerals" is deemed as extremely immoral, however this could be as a result of the children's lack of knowledge towards what is morally correct and incorrect. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Analysis of First Love

Synopsis= Duffy focuses this poem on the impact that is left after going through a first love and the surreal feeling of falling in love that takes over a persona briefly. It is clear to see in this poem that the speaker is now disconnected from their first love but the memories of it are reflected on nostalgically and with pleasure Key Quotations + Analysis= Waking, with a dream of first love forming real words, as close to my lips as lipstick, I speaker your name, after a silence of years, into the pillow, and the power of your name brings me here to the window, naked, to say it again to a garden shaking with light. This was a child's love, and yet I clench my eyes  till the pictures return, unfocused at first, then almost clear, an old film played at a slow speed. All day I will glimpse it, in windows of changing sky,   in mirrors, my lover's eyes, wherever you are. And later a star, long dead , here seems precisely  the size of a tear....
Post a Comment
Read more

Analysis of Fraud

Synopsis= It is widely believed that Duffy based the poem 'Fraud' on a man name Robert Maxwell, however his prior name was Jon Ludwick Hock. Maxwell managed to carve a new identity for himself in England after moving from Czechoslovakia where he became a largely successful MP and media head. However after his death there was a burst of controversy surrounding Maxwell as it was believed that there was a lot of flaws in his finances, mainly from pensions. Key Quotations + Analysis 1.) "I spoke the English" Here the speaker is trying to affirm his English identity, however the deviant grammar contradicts this as no native English person would make this mistake. As a result this error flaws the speakers cover and almost unveils his true identity. 2.) "Politicians in and out of their pram"  This line has a lot of plosive language which can convey the speakers bitterness towards politics, his bitter tone is somewhat ironic as Robert Maxwell himself was...
Post a Comment
Read more

Analysis of The Cliche Kid

Synopsis= Duffy uses this poem to explore the themes of mental health and isolation amongst young people and could be perhaps expressing the daily pressures that young people face and the detrimental effects attached to them, shown through the speaker of the poem who is clearly in a deviated mental health state. Key Quotations + Analysis 1.) "The rustle of my fathers ballgown" This initially gives an extremely distorted image of the speakers childhood as they have obviously blurred the gender roles of their mother and father, this distortion could imply that the speaker has lost grip of their identity and do not have clear grasp on what gender role they fit in as they are so lost within cliche/stereotypical perceptions of gender that they are unaware of how to act. This further conveys the emotional turmoil of the speaker because they are confused in their own body.  The word choice "rustle" is significant as it is such a precise sound to remember yet the spe...
Post a Comment
Read more