Arrivals, departures Flashcards
(13 cards)
Analyse the title: ‘Arrivals, Departures’
the abbreviated title creates a sped up tempo to represent how quickly opportunities come and go. emphatic of the fleeting nature of opportunity.
Why do the ‘channel boats come sidling’? (Arrivals, Departures)
Opportunities are shown to arrive quietly, often unnoticed.
Analyse ‘ (his bag of samples knocking at his knees) ‘ (Arrivals, Departures)
Use of parenthesis to emphasise the metaphorical representation of opportunities as loud and appealing as they are sold to society as attractive (held by a salesman). Juxtaposes ‘sidling’ to convey 2 voices.
Analyse ‘His advent blurted’ (Arrivals, Departures)
Representative of the sudden and loud nature of opportunity as it arrives abruptly
Analyse ‘barely recalled from sleep’ (Arrivals, Departures)
Parenthesis to emphasise how society is largely unaware of decisions surrounding the opportunities we face, reacting almost unconsciously.
Analyse ‘Doleful distance’ (Arrivals, Departures)
Plosive alliteration to emphasise the sense of foreboding associated with the future which robs society of any sense of excitement for the passing of time
Analyse ‘Horny dilemmas’ (Arrivals, Departures)
Pun: 1.) Signal for the loud arrival of the difficult decisions associated with opportunity 2.) Suggests we make decisions based on personal pleasure in dilemmas
Analyse ‘come and choose wrong, they cry, come and choose wrong’ (Arrivals, Departures)
italics used to represent the voice of society, which feels a sense of anxiety and anguish surrounding the possibility of making a poor decision in the face of opportunity.
Analyse ‘And so we rise’ (Arrivals, Departures)
Use of monosyllabic language conveys a lack of thought in decision making by society
Why does Larkin employ a rhyming triplet at the end of the poem? (Arrivals, Departures)
Consolidation of the idea that the speaker is consistently plagued by anxiety in not knowing if taking an opportunity is the right choice
Analyse: ‘we are nudged from comfort, never knowing’ (Arrivals, Departures)
Society faces discomfort in the dilemma of not knowing if taking an opportunity is the right choice
Analyse ‘Or if, this night, happiness too is going’ (Arrivals, Departures)
Light imagery = Absence of light symbolises vanishing hope in the idea of opportunity. End-stop creates a sense of finality in any chosen decision to emphasise the anxiety of the speaker surrounding choices in the face of opportunity as they can not be reversed.
Link the american dream and post-war optimism to ‘Arrivals, Departures’
the growing sense of optimism surrounding the American dream and post-war optimism creates a sense of anxiety in the speaker who feels conflicted about the rapid arrival opportunities and the dilemmas they create in offering difficult decisions and the risk of mistakes.
