Talking in Bed

Philip Larkin-Talking in Bed

Talking in bed is about a couple who are talking in bed and Larkin describes what their relationship is like. The main theme in the poem is love and relationships. He structures the poem into 4 stanza’s each with 3 lines in them. The first stanza is about talking in bed, the second stanza is about the weather, the third stanza is about the landscape and the final stanza goes back to the reader talking about his relationship with his wife. The poem is actually talking about Larkin and his relationship with his wife.

The title of the poem shows that the Larkin and his wife are having an intimacy private conversation with each other with no other things to distract them away from one another.  Shows that they are in the same bed which suggests they are a couple. We also assume it is set in the evening because you don’t really talk in bed unless they both don’t have work in the morning.  The fact they are just talking each other could suggests they are not really in love with each other and that it is almost like a friendship between them instead.

 

The first stanza of the poem talks about what talking in bed is like for him and what it means. The first line in the poem says that “Talking in bed ought to be easy”. This suggests that Larkin finds talking in bed not that easy to do and finds it quite difficult. It shows that Larkin and his wife are somehow isolated from each other and find it difficult to communicate which each other. In the next Line Larkin suggests they are in bed “lying together”, so they don’t do anything else. Also the fact that it “goes back so far” might also suggest they don’t do anything in bed together anymore and what they did together is a long time ago, and because Larking uses the word “lying” which suggests that they lie to each other and have been doing it for a long time. The third line talks about “An emblem of two people being honest” which shows that talking in bed is a symbol of them being honest with each other and keeping it a secret. However in the previous line Larking talked about “lying”, which is a paradox because he is saying that the both are lying and being honest with each other.  Larkin obviously does not believe that love could last forever and can be a disappointment.

The second stanza talks about the wind apart from the last line with follows on from the previous stanza. It says that “Yet more and more time passes silently”. This shows that although they are honest with each other they but they don’t say anything to one another instead of telling the truth. This means that that the couple think that being silent will avoid them telling the truth to each other. The second line is “Outside, the wind’s incomplete unrest”. This shows an absence of an intimacy and the couple did not say everything they could have done. It also suggests that Larkin feels that he is outside, alone and away from his wife.  Be that the couple in this poem has been in a relationship for a long time or possibly be married but the wind is active all the time. Larkin uses nature to describe what is happening outside, because while the outside world continues as normal, the inside world remains in its isolation. Moreover, Larkin shows contempt and dislike for modern life by touching the problematic values of human communication. Nowadays, communicating with a person is something many people could possibly relate to, as it is a problem often seen in everyday life. The third line in the stanza “Builds and dispersers clouds in the sky” could suggest that their relationship breaks and builds, so at one moment they hate each other the next they like each other.  Larkin uses the weather as pathetic fallacy to show what is happening on the inside.   

As in second stanza Larkin also uses imagery of the nature and environment at the beginning of third stanza where Larkin talks about the landscape, “And dark towns heap up on the horizon”, but this time the focus is not on natural objects but rather on man-made aspects of the environment. As seen in line 7 the environment, suggested by dark towns, does not bring satisfactory fulfilments in human expectations. “Dark towns” suggest that Larkin thinks that society is miserable and relationships cause darkness. It also shows that darkness is the future of their relationship. The following line “None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why”, shows that there is no hope coming for him only more darkness in the future. In the third line of the third stanza “At this unique distance from isolation, Larkin emphasises the desperation of situation between these two people gathered in one place where they could truly be themselves, but they are at a loss.

In the final stanza of the poem Larkin talks about what he says to his wife that affects their relationship. The first two lines “It becomes still more difficult to find Words at one true and kind”. This suggests that he finds it difficult to find a word that is kind and true to his wife. He does not know whether to be true or kind and can only say something that either hurts his wife’s feelings or lies to her. The final line in the poem is “Or not untrue and not unkind” which is a paradox because not untrue means true and not unkind means unkind.  This shows that there is a gap between kind and unkind and that is where he is. He is using tact diplomacy evasions which is a way of not hurting the feeling but not lying at the same time so you are trying to be true and kind at the same time.  The final line leaves the reader with ambiguous feeling of unfulfilled desire.

So Larkin’s poem “Talking in bed” shows us a fairly miserable relationship between two people that has run its cause. It enables us to relate to possible common experiences in our own lives and provoke us to think about the gap between expectations, the reality and irony of love in modern world. However, an irony, one of the dominant features in this poem, gives us the opportunity to create our own perception of love. I think Larkin believed that love is a positive thing, but we all know that reality makes nothing simple and often confront us with painful disappointment.