The Large Cool Store

This poem critiques big cheap department stores and the people that shop there, as the persona struggles to understand how how hard working people can find pleasure in the things that shop offers.The repetitive rhyme scheme ABABA reflects the repetitive life of the working class and the lack of interest the persona has for this shop. 

Stanza 1:

• 'cool store' introduces a mocking tone. 
• 'cheap clothes' shows it has no class.
• 'simple sizes' suggests there is no depth to these shops, they are just simple without interest. 
• 'knitwear, summer casuals, hose' using a list makes the products and shop sound more mundane and repetitive.
• 'browns and greys, maroon and navy' dark mundane colours give a depressing effect and also the use of feminine colour labels shows how they would be seen from a shoppers perspective. 
• 'weekday world' suggests it lacks the fun of the weekend reinforcing it being mundane.

Stanza 2:

• 'leave at dawn' shows how hard working the working class are. 
• 'low terreced houses' generalises them into one type of people with one life. 
• 'timed for factory' suggests that their lives revolve around it.
• 'past the heaps of shirts...spreads the stands of modes for night', shows how beyond the work they have a night life, 'modes for night' making it sound almost like a costume, a pretend persona, it shows a different side of personality, from working hard to in the personas view wasting money on frilly things. 
• 'machine embroidered' links to larkins distaste for industrialisation and suggests these clothes lack care. 
• 'thin as blouses' connotes this enjoyment is fickle. 

Stanza 3:

• 'lemon, sapphire, moss' being natural things contrasts with the next line of fake man made things, 'bri-nylon baby dolls' linking to the personas view of the contrast in the working classes lives. It also could suggests people cheapen nature. 
• 'to suppose they share a world' demonstrates the view that these to things going together is not right. 

Stanza 4:

• 'separate and unearthly love is' shows his lack of understanding of women and people and the way it can't be explained why they do what they do or enjoy what they do, but to him what people enjoy is unnatural because of its lack of practical benefit.This shows the persona is an outsider.
• 'or women are' shows how they have been generalised as the shoppers. 
• 'young unreal wishes' suggests the youth are too naive to even wish for something of meaning, and there is no substance in wanting material things, it is pretend and pointless. it also shows his distaste for young people. 
• 'synthetic, new and natureless in our ecstasies' suggests being who find enjoyment in these things and unnatural to him, almost not real and pretending. It shows his distaste and his oldfashionedness as 'new' is combined with these words.