Dockery And Son Analysis

'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'
Death-suited, visitant, I nod. 'And do
You keep in touch with-' Or remember how
Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight
We used to stand before that desk, to give
'Our version' of 'these incidents last night'?
I try the door of where I used to live:

Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.
A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored.
Canal and clouds and colleges subside
Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord,
Anyone up today must have been born
In '43, when I was twenty-one.
If he was younger, did he get this son
At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn

High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms
With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows
How much . . . How little . . . Yawning, I suppose
I fell asleep, waking at the fumes
And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed,
And ate an awful pie, and walked along
The platform to its end to see the ranged
Joining and parting lines reflect a strong

Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife,
No house or land still seemed quite natural.
Only a numbness registered the shock
Of finding out how much had gone of life,
How widely from the others. Dockery, now:
Only nineteen, he must have taken stock
Of what he wanted, and been capable
Of . . . No, that's not the difference: rather, how

Convinced he was he should be added to!
Why did he think adding meant increase?
To me it was dilution. Where do these
Innate assumptions come from? Not from what
We think truest, or most want to do:
Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They're more a style
Our lives bring with them: habit for a while,
Suddenly they harden into all we've got

And how we got it; looked back on, they rear
Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying
For Dockery a son, for me nothing,
Nothing with all a son's harsh patronage.
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.

.: :.

This poem relies heavily on Larkin's ability to weave the past and present into one, almost metaphysical, philsophy on life. The importance of Dockery and his son lies in the reflection on youth one finds in one's offspring-something the poet is perhaps afraid of-"to me it was dilution"-which leads to his sudden sense of reflection and contemplation on "how much of my life is gone".The poet does not find his lack of a son alarming-it simply leads him to the conclusion that life changing decisions emerge from mindless, thoughtless styles-"which something hidden from us chose".
Larkin compares himself now, at the memorial service at his college,"death-suitant", with his young, mischieveous self "black-gowned",and his door "where i used to live locked", later saing "these warp shut like doors". Clearly then his link with his past is crucial in his pessimistic conclusions drawn in the final stanza. His younger self is the only link he now posseses with youth, while Dockery has a son. "life is first boredom then fear"-his recollections of his college days seem to contradict this idea totally,but Larkin is making a point about how what you are left with shapes how you view your past-whatever the former reality actually was.

| Posted on 2009-01-06 | by a guest