Toads Flashcards
(12 cards)
Analyse the title ‘Toads’
Introduces the extended metaphor i which the toads represent work, immediately presenting the obligation of work as a pest
Analyse ‘toad work/Squat on my life’
personification of work presents it as a heavy, unwanted burden that brings discomfort to life
Analyse ‘Six days of the work it ____/With its sickening_____’
soils, poison - use of sibilance and imagery of disease acts to emphasise how the speaker sees work as damaging
Analyse ‘folk live on their wits: lecturers, lispers, losers, loblolly-men, louts’
Alliterative asyndetic listing immediately undermines the value of these occupations. Larkin groups people who live off of their intelligence with less respectable people to degrade them and mock societal perceptions of their superiority.
AO3: Why might Larkin mock those who live off their intelligence?
Larkin graduated from Oxford, therefore he had many peers from privileged backgrounds - like Martin Amus - who could afford to live on their wits unlike Larkin. This may have provoked a sense of bitterness or jealousy in Larkin against those who could live on their wit.
Anlayse ‘Their unspeakable wives/Are skinny as whippets’
Simile - dehumanises those who don’t work by degrading them to a ‘lesser’ part of society. The speaker looks down on those who are unemployed.
Analyse ‘That’s the stuff/That dreams are made on’
Intertextual reference to the tempest, where the magician prospero explores the idea of a utopian society, Larkin’s speaker is therefore perhaps mocking the notion of a perfect society, and, by consequence, is accepting work as an unavoidable part of life - as reflected in the quote ‘something sufficiently toad-like squats in me, too’
Analyse ‘blarney’
Analyse ‘the fame the girl and the money’
How can we see Larkin’s acceptance of work in his real life?
Larkin rejected the position of poet laureate twice to continue working as a librarian at the University of Hull for 30 years, earning the nickname: ‘hermit of Hull’
What is the rhyme scheme in toads?
Slant/rhyme scheme to represent the 2 conflicting voices between hatred and acceptance of work
Why does toads use quatrains?
To reflect the inevitability of following obligations of life and conforming to expectations of work.
