Essential Beauty

This poem looks at how realistic publicity is suggesting it doesn’t reflect real people and lives, by sarcastically juxtaposing the idealistic adverts with a less perfect reality – suggesting people shouldn’t buy into the fake world it is portraying.

Analysis:

•         Juxtaposition e.g. ‘screen graves with custard’, ‘cover slums with praise', ‘screen’ and ‘cover’ represents the media’s coverage of real life' while ‘custard’ ‘silver knife/golden butter’ suggests his sarcasm, making the poem slightly comical.
•          ™Rhyme scheme emphasises the contrasts, e.g. ‘gutter’ and ‘butter’ suggesting they are two things that should not go together
•          ™‘They dominate outdoors' shows Larkin’s negative and destructive views regarding industrialisation
•          ™Repetition of ‘pure’ – emphasises how idealistic and unobtainable the advertisements are
•          ™‘Pure coldness to our live imperfect eyes’ – ‘coldness’ suggests we are allowing items that are not alive to define our lifestyles 
•          ™‘Taste old age’, synaesthesia, reflecting the impossibility of what the advertisements portray
•         ™‘Where nothing’s made as new or washed quite clean’ – advertisements force its audience to strive for the unachievable 
•          ™‘White clothed ones from tennis clubs’ – juxtaposes ‘the boy puking his heart out in the gents’ as the drunk wouldn’t be portrayed in advertisements, contrasts with the upper class who would be, ‘ones’ reflects the detachment of the upper class and the general population.

Links:

•         ™ Whitsun Weddings – doesn’t believe in happiness of the couples or of what the adverts are portraying, paranoid he is being tricked
•          ™Talking in Bed – couples should be an ‘emblem’ however it shows an interpretation that is not true 
•          ™Here- ‘they dominate outdoors’ is mirrored and shows Larkin’s hatred for the power industrialisation holds
•        ™ ™‘An Arundel Tomb’ – both present an unobtainable image that Larkin disagrees with 

Context:

™Written about Hull, after World War 2, about the large amount of billboards covering the destruction caused by the bombs. ™Larkin doesn’t like industrialisation, and believes society’s dysfunctional ways would rather cover problems than fix them – repetition of ‘graves’ reinforces the idea that idealistic advertisements cover the parts of society that aren’t working