SoniaL

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 * ** T ** itle || “Aubade” means, in simple terms, a poem about the sunrise. Uses of it range from complimenting others to describing the desolation of separate lovers. Sunrises tend to be accompanied by ideas of new hope, as one is often moving from the dark night to the light morning. The transition from dark to light is often used to symbolize the transition from dark and often troubling times to new and hopeful bright futures. The title, then, implies that the poem is describing the positive awakening from a desolate dark past. ||
 * ** P ** araphrase || The poem is separated by five stanzas that reveal in their tone the dreariness and cynicism of the speaker. The first stanza sets the speaker in his room, awakening to the dawn and, to him, the certainty of his death. The second stanza describes the numbness his person has in his life, and the sheer emptiness and futility of living. Life is “[empty]” and “nothing”. The third stanza describes the fear he mentioned in the first stanza, of death. It is a fear of numbness; one that is not felt, like an “anesthetic”, of something that cannot be felt by any description of life. It is perhaps this inexperience that causes fear. The fourth describes the denial that often comes with living. Death is “but a small blur”, often ignored, and when realized often drives one mad to liquor or people. Here the speaker reveals more of his pessimism; Death, he claims, cares not if one fears it or fights against it. It is a wall lacking emotion that is unaffected in all ways. The fifth stanza thus concludes this desolate description of human life and interaction with death. The light does not bring hope, but instead sheds light on items we often wish we cannot see. Death, the speaker claims, is always on the mind and is never truly accepted. The final description of the world is mundane and dreary. The sky is “white as clay with no sun”; the lack of sun no doubt symbolizes the lack of optimism and joy in his life. The final sentence, referring to postmen as doctors, reflects the state of the world in his eyes. People are sickened by their relationship with death and are thus in need of doctors as often as postmen come to deliver the mail. ||
 * ** C ** onnotations || Larkin uses a strange mix of contrast, repetition and symbolism to communicate his ideas. In the first stanza, he refers to dark as “soundless” (2), not only personifying it yet also revealing his opinions of the dark. To be soundless is to be inconspicuous; it is in the same category as being undetectable, “a small unfocused blur” (32), and not felt by the speaker. This theme is used throughout the rest of the poem to reveal the speaker’s preference to this dark, which contrasts with the common opinion that to be caught in the dark is to be caught in a bad place. The manner in which the speaker embraces it, then, foreshadows his somewhat ironic shunning of life because of the inevitable end in death. This is immediately made by obvious by the introduction of light, which draws the speaker’s attention to this obsession. The light shines upon the idea half-hidden in the dark “till then I see what’s always really there” (4). In this case, the dark and light do not represent good and bad times. Instead, they represent the hiding and revelation of death. In dark, death is hidden in the unconscious, fear turned numb and “blank” (11). The light, which normally represents bright times, plays the role as the cruel revealer, which forces the speaker to confront his end until his mind grows numb from the “glare” (11). This contrast between light and dark’s normal connotations and that portrayed in this poem highlights the contrast between life’s normal happy connotations with this speaker’s insistence of its futility. Like how light and dark can be easily misunderstood, so too can life. The anticipation of death colors every fiber of the speaker’s body; it is the “sure extinction that we travel to” (17) and thus fuels his sense of “[terror]” (20). The author’s specific mention of religion as a “trick” (22) to turn the human mind away from death is both interesting and meaningful. Religion, which often in itself uses the ideas of light and dark, is presented as a failed and perhaps backwards institution. The failure of the church is used as an argument to insist that light and dark are, in fact, not signs of good and evil, right and wrong, but are simply agents used to hide what is “really [always] there” (4). He mocks the church’s hypocrisy, which insists that one cannot fear what it cannot feel. This, he insists, is what humanity fears the most—death, which snatches away all connections and feelings. The “nothing” (29) that comes with death—repeated in this stanza and in other forms throughout. It is this “extinction” (17), “emptiness” (16) and “[blanking]” (11) that makes death so frightening. Death is not pain; it is the lack of pain. It is the “anesthetic from which none comes round”(30)—revealing both his idea of death’s numbness and the connection it holds with sleep, which is so like it in its unfeeling nature. The next stanza reveals the struggle he must face every day to keep the idea of death off of his mind, which “slows each impulse down to indecision” (33). His description of fear as a “furnace” (6) contrasts again with the normal idea of fear. In this, he equates fear with almost anger, which is associated with fires and furnaces. By choosing “furnace”, Larkin again links fear with religion, which often describes hell—and at times death—as a fiery furnace where souls suffer. At the end of the stanza he personifies death as someone to whine to. By doing so, he creates an illusion of interaction between death and its victims, casting death in more of a villainous role and thus portraying the desolation is brings. The last stanza brings the reader back to the first stanza, where the “light strengthens” (51) and thus strips away all deceptions and reveals “what we have always known” (53). This cements, again, the struggle that has presented itself since the first stanza—this helpless battle humanity has wielded against death that is inevitable in all forms. Death cannot be avoided and it cannot be forgotten, even when man wishes so vehemently for it to escape, turning even to the dark to hide from its clutches. The interesting use of “crouches” to refer to telephones emphasize the predator-prey feeling that the speaker feels is between him and death. At every step he may die; every day may be his last. Instead of viewing this optimistically, as sunrises tend to be associated with, he dreads it with all his being. The world, thus, is “white like clay, with no sun”… which is interesting because of the light mentioned. In this, then, there is a separation between sun and light. This is because the sun provides not only light, but also warmth. Without it, the world is cold and dreary, and is thus one where death can fester. ||
 * ** A ** ttitude || The speaker expresses an attitude of defeat and a sense of finality. It is not just the thought of death that haunts him; it is the inevability of it, and the inability to escape these thoughts. The dreary image painted in the last stanza cements his view of the dreary world he sees outside his window. ||
 * ** S ** hifts || The poem presents a gradual shift from the dark—or, ignorance, as it plays in this poem—to the light—or cruel awareness. In the first stanza the speaker is reminded suddenly of death and human worthlessness. In the last stanza, the light reveals clearly the dreary and mundane manner of the living. The paragraphs in between explore the speaker’s own musings about death, and reveal more of his attitude towards light, dark, and death. ||
 * ** T ** heme || The theme of this poem lies in human fragility and our relation with light and dark, awareness and ignorance, life and death. Larkin explores the lowest of all human desperations and our relation with death. Everyone knows that death is inevitable, yet the presentation of the speaker’s pessimism towards this subject clashes strongly with the perceived image of a hopeful sunrise. The theme of inevitable misery and numbness, then, is extremely important to the poem. ||
 * ** T ** itle || In this, Larkin uses the title “Aubade” correctly. A sunrise is naturally attributed to a shift from dark to light, from bad times to good. While the poem indeed utilizes a shift, it is one from numb and purposeful ignorance to cruel revelation—moving instead from false optimism to reality’s inescapable pessimism. The irony of the title in its plainness. “Aubade” has the same meaning as “Sonnet”, in the fact that it describes the type of poem yet reveals nothing about the poem in itself. By starting with a very common title, Larkin immediately presents a starting point for the contrast that he utilizes between all aspects of his poem to stir a sense of shock into the reader’s heart. ||