Poetry of Departures
Poetry of DeparturesLife is often referred to as a never-ending road. The road contains twists, turns, cracks, and any other means possible to send you in numerous directions. But often times, you’ll come to a fork in the road. One direction will lead you to new paths that you haven’t explored before while the other will keep you on the same road you’ve always been on, the road to nowhere. In the poem, “Poetry of Departures” from “The Less Deceived” by Philip Larkin, Larkin refers to the road of life as two different ways of living. These ways are defined in different categories. One category consists of those who leave home and explore the other options the world has to offer. The other category consists of those who stay at home and never get a close up look at the outside world. The use of diction within the poem helps support the different qualities that the “townies” and the “travelers” exert.
At the beginning of the poem, the author makes reference to an epitaph, which is an inscription written on a tombstone. The epitaph usually contains information of what the deceased did with their life. The “travelers” would most likely have a more efficient epitaph than the “townies”. The “travelers” were the ones who took advantages of their outlying surroundings while the “townies” usually scared of the unknown, did not.
In the first stanza, the lines “He chucked up everything and just cleared off,” are underlined. This is meant for emphasis of the diction of these lines. These lines could be rewritten as “He packed up everything and then left,” but the impact would not be the same. The fact that the “traveler” chucked everything instead of picking it shows a burst of spontaneity. It articulates that the “traveler” did not cautiously plan his journey but just got up and left. The rest of the stanza attests that the move was good for the “traveler”. The move was bold and purifying, setting off new elements within the “traveler” since it was a...
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