Critical Appreciation of a Study of Reading Habits by Philip Larkin

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The chosen poem is A Study of Reading Habits, by Philip Larkin from his collection The Whitsun Weddings (1964). As with many of Larkin’s poems, the title contains irony, because it contrasts with the text. Here it implies that this will be a serious, scholarly poem, most likely to do with the different ways people read. What it actually reads is nothing similar. The subject is actually a timeline of Larkin’s life. His poem is in a tri-partite structure of three stanzas which each explore a stage in Larkin’s life, when he was a child, a teenager and while writing the poem. We find out his changing opinion of reading as he grows up. This is shown through his use of time with temporal words like “when”, “later” and “now”. The themes also change throughout every stanza to show the character development. Throughout, Larkin uses a simple and direct style in his tone and diction, with no frivolity. His language is colloquial- Larkin would often write for the common man. In stanza one, Larkin shares his childhood and how he had problems in his life; particularly bullies and school. The way he would console himself was by reading; this was escapism for him. He declares “It was worth ruining my eyes to know I could still keep cool”, which makes the reader imagine these books are an addiction and that even though it later leads him on to wearing “inch-thick specs” at that moment it didn’t bother him because it kept his loneliness content. However, this had a negative side because it brought about a low self-consciousness as he also developed a stutter and spent a lot of time by himself. This introduces one of the main themes of the poem; solitude, which is shown through imagery of Larkin being by himself in the first and third stanza, while even in the second he has a sexual anxiety because he had fantasies about girls he would go out with. This is linked to his poem
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