Wants
This is a poem that discusses existentialism and our reasons for being as humans, with the speaker
suggesting that solitude is something necessary for all of us. The speaker feels weighed down by
societal expectation, and desires to be alone in a quiet personal space, escaping from the noise and
madness of the social whirl. It is ultimately the human need for seclusion versus the instinct to be
social.
Different themes in this poem:
Isolation and loneliness.
Society and expectations.
Escapism.
Death
Key poems to link to and why:
Reasons for attendance
Contextual links:
Larkin himself was a melancholic introvert who craved aloneness. At an interview in 1981:
'I would say, yes, I was and am extremely shy.'
Link to title of collection- in this poem, speaker does not want reader to be deceived about
mortality and society.
Key aspects of form and structure:
Poem is free verse, without a rhyme scheme- perhaps to mirror the bleak message of the
poem.
Repetition is used to create the illusion of rhythm. This kind of refrain also brings the reader
back to the message of the poem, and there is the sense that the speaker cannot imagine
another way of putting it.
Anaphora in stanza one, and listing in stanza two, helps to emphasise the endless demands
on ones time, and the list of things that keep people one away from what they really want.
Stanzas split- signals the shift in the poem into discussing existence in the second stanza.
Key methods and argument of poem:
The poem opens with the speaker voicing their desire to break free and to be alone, using a refrain
to reinforce this idea at the end of the first stanza.
‘Beyond all this, the wish to be alone’- could ‘this’ be talking about the superficiality of
society and interaction, or perhaps just life itself? Does the speaker want to be alone away
from people, or completely alone through death (something that will be explored in the
second stanza.) For now, this is left ambiguous.
Repeating this line at the end of the stanza emphasises the way that the desire for solitude is
at the beginning and end of everything else one might want.
This is a poem that discusses existentialism and our reasons for being as humans, with the speaker
suggesting that solitude is something necessary for all of us. The speaker feels weighed down by
societal expectation, and desires to be alone in a quiet personal space, escaping from the noise and
madness of the social whirl. It is ultimately the human need for seclusion versus the instinct to be
social.
Different themes in this poem:
Isolation and loneliness.
Society and expectations.
Escapism.
Death
Key poems to link to and why:
Reasons for attendance
Contextual links:
Larkin himself was a melancholic introvert who craved aloneness. At an interview in 1981:
'I would say, yes, I was and am extremely shy.'
Link to title of collection- in this poem, speaker does not want reader to be deceived about
mortality and society.
Key aspects of form and structure:
Poem is free verse, without a rhyme scheme- perhaps to mirror the bleak message of the
poem.
Repetition is used to create the illusion of rhythm. This kind of refrain also brings the reader
back to the message of the poem, and there is the sense that the speaker cannot imagine
another way of putting it.
Anaphora in stanza one, and listing in stanza two, helps to emphasise the endless demands
on ones time, and the list of things that keep people one away from what they really want.
Stanzas split- signals the shift in the poem into discussing existence in the second stanza.
Key methods and argument of poem:
The poem opens with the speaker voicing their desire to break free and to be alone, using a refrain
to reinforce this idea at the end of the first stanza.
‘Beyond all this, the wish to be alone’- could ‘this’ be talking about the superficiality of
society and interaction, or perhaps just life itself? Does the speaker want to be alone away
from people, or completely alone through death (something that will be explored in the
second stanza.) For now, this is left ambiguous.
Repeating this line at the end of the stanza emphasises the way that the desire for solitude is
at the beginning and end of everything else one might want.
