Analysis on Larkins' poem

The title is confusing in this poem. What you expect is a list or something clearer on how to read, or something along those lines. Instead, what you get is a poem that ends with “books are a load of crap.” This had me confused for quite a while. Why would someone dedicate a whole poem just to say that books are meaningless, there must be some sort of ulterior motive behind it all.

In A Study of Reading Habits, Larkin makes many things clear that I can closely relate to in many ways. He starts of the poem with a flashback to his childhood and how reading helped him cope with many issues. “When getting… cured most things short of school.” This is attributed to living vicariously through characters in a book in order to diminish his struggles in real life. He doesn’t clearly establish what those struggles are, which is a great way to include many people. If he had included only certain struggles then by specifying only certain problems, it would limit the people who could connect to this poem. By leaving it open-ended it allows readers to connect with the world of escaping into a book, no matter whether the problem is big or small. One thing that I think is clear is that he deals with bullies more in the metaphysical world. In reading a book about an underdog defeating the bully, or a David v Goliath story it’s as if he becomes the hero in the story and can defeat the bullies. I think this is attributed much to a child-like innocence and imagination. He can as a young child avoid all his problems, and become a superhero in a book while in the second and third stanzas his outlook on life bleak and jaded.

In the second stanza he already has grown so much that his eyesight requires him to wear glasses. “Later, with inch-thick specs, Evil was just my lark.” As this line shows, he has grown so much that evil is his source of amusement. Instead of focusing on hero stories or something to help him cope with his problems; he now is more interested in the darker side of books and possible humanity. The whole stanza is based on the premise of him hiding in the dark and clubbing women with sex. These metaphors could be considered as alluding to rape or some sort of violence towards women. Whether it’s because he isn’t comfortable around them, he feels ignored, or it’s just a sort of awkward teen phase everything is left for speculation. What I can tell is that it makes a complete different turn from the first stanza, from beating the bully to being a person who preys on women. The title would have me believe that it is intended to represent how we approach reading and the different things we take from it in different points in our lives.

By the last stanza he has already become jaded by life that books have no more meaning for him, because he can’t find a disconnect between reality and a ficticious world. They are too much in common and the enjoyment of immersing himself in a different world is gone. Now, the only thing he can read about is about the common man, about himself. “the chap who’s yellow and keeps the store seems far too familiar.” To me by this point in the poem life has come too far for the author to be able to enjoy reading, because he doesn’t have the child mentality that allowed him to just focus on reading and believe that heroes exist, and that they win. By the time adulthood roles around everything is based on having a job and maintaining it in order to be able to live, so you have to become a realist. There just isn’t time to focus on dreams and fantasy. So, by this point the only thing that you can do is get drunk, forget about books, forget about your problems and use alcohol as a coping mechanism.

I think it is all related to how our lives become jaded as we grow older. Children are the ones with the most imagination while towards the latter half of our lives we are so worried with having a job, the right women, the perfect home and all these other things that we tend to become more realistic. People tend to ignore and forget about dreams and fantasy, putting in their place a more sinister outlook on life. No longer treading there pain with hopes, but rather just drinking and dulling there pain.