Family is not a misery but a precious destiny

P. Larkin, "This Be the Verse" insults the reader and his family

In Larkin’s judgement a family does not really exist

Violence in Education

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
  They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
  And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
  By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
  And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
  It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
  And don't have any kids yourself.

Family is not a misery but a precious destiny

The poem "This be the verse" by Philip Larkin deals with the relation between children and their parents. It is written in the second person. So the author is speaking to the readers all the time, as if he wants to teach them something.

In the first stanza he describes the relation between "you" and your parents, in the second that one between your parents and their parents. In the third stanza finally there is a kind of moral.

In the author´s opinion the only connection between "you" and your parents consists of being created by them and of being given the characteristics they equipped you with. He only enumerates negative aspects. For example he especially points out that even one of the few connections, the creation of you, might not be intended but was an accident. And he only mentions the bad things you received from your parents by which he wants to emphasize how little you are connected to your parents.

In the second stanza he proceeds with this way of writing. He points out that the parents have also only been created by their parents. But now another aspect is mentioned, namely that their parents were either very stern to one another or had a bad argument. So perhaps the author wants to say that apart from the minor physical connections a relationship on the social level between children and their parents cannot be developed either.

P. Larkin, "This Be the Verse" insults the reader and his family

I do not like this poem because it only shocks the reader with taboo words (like: "they fuck you up, your mum and dad" in line 1) and only offers  a rather mad tip for the reader - after Larkin insulted him and his family.

(N.F., 11d, October 2006)

Philip Larkin`s exaggerations cannot be serious

Arguing "Contra" and being "Pro"

Philip Larkin’s poem "This Be the Verse" (1974) warns its reader not to have children, because this is a fault with only negative aspects. But in my opinion the words which are used in the poem are totally the opposite of the meaning of the text.

The poem consists of three stanzas; each of them has four verses: The first one always rhymes with the third, the second one with the fourth. The first stanza tells us that the children sometimes were only "accidents" and the parents did not want to have a son or a daughter; but on the other hand they are too lazy to do anything against it, and so they keep the baby who is full of the bad characteristics of their parents and "new" faults by itself. From the second stanza we learn that the parents grew up in a similar way, so the life between being born and dying is like a cycle with always the same boring experiences in it, without any special features or individualism. The last stanza summarizes the cycle of human beings and concludes from those negative facts that the only way to get out of this depressing situation is not to have any children.

The speaker of the poem talks directly to the reader in the second person "you", so the warnings hit him or her very emotionally. Also the appeal at the end not to go on with the cycle lets the reader feel more involved.

But I think the view of the speaker is not the meaning of the text, because the negative aspects of getting children are so exaggerated that you cannot take them seriously anymore. The excessive metaphors like "It deepens like a coastal shelf" are too sad, too depressing, except the arguments which are given that it is often the same turn sound realistic in a certain way. They remind me of the way young people argue when they want to leave their parents and their parental home to start an independent life. In those times they mean to show everyone and especially themselves that they do not depend on the way they have been living before and try to make distinctions to their family life. So Larkin describes how young people could think, if they want to make everything better, from his point of view with an ironic attitude.

The informal language which is used seems to support my opinion. On the one hand you can find exaggerated metaphors which sound dramatic and unbelievable. On the other hand many taboo words are used ("They fuck you up"), which try to imitate the language of the youth and describe the things as negatively as possible.

All in all Larkin has found a clever way to express his own opinion with the ironic exaggeration of the opposite. He wants the reader to think about the two points of view and to make the conclusion that a family cannot be as hard and inhuman as it is portrayed. In my opinion the poem despises the people who are against family life (but not as extremely as it is described, of course). It imputes naivety to them because of the exaggeration of the thoughts and that is why I cannot agree with the poem in every detail.

(L.H., 11d, October 2006)

In Larkin’s judgement a family does not really exist

In the poem ‘This Be the Verse’ by Philip Larkin it is explained that parents transfer their faults to you. This is the reason why you should leave home as early as possible and should not have children yourself.
This poem consists of three stanzas and each of them has four verses.
In the first stanza it is explained that parents transfer all their faults to you, whereas they add some special faults for you.
In the second stanza it is said that the parents were themselves educated by authorities of lower quality. After all the poem ends with the statement that this misery is passed on from one generation to the next generation. The author’s advice is to leave home as early as possible and not to have children of your own. Altogether we can say that Philip Larkin has a very negative understanding of a family. This can also be noticed by the way the poem is written: In his first sentence Larkin explains that your parents ‘fuck you up’ unintentionally, because they ‘fill’ you with their ‘faults’ and ‘add some extra just for you’. Philip Larkin wants to convince you with these drastic metaphors that you are not as free as you believe and your education is based on the faults and problems your parents have. So you are educated according to their faults and failures and you are additionally given some extra ones. This statement sounds urgent by the use of an anaphora (’ They… they…’).

However, Phil Larkin does not blame the parents for all the faults, for they were educated in the same way they educate their own children. Those guilty persons of this disaster are described clearly as ‘fools in old-style hats and coats’, who were half the time ‘soppy-stern and half at one another’s throats’. Philip Larkin personifies the old and conservative outmoded (‘old- style hats‘) failures and norms to show that the traditional passing on of the old values takes place without any change or improvement. This does not happen by own conviction, but because these values are the idea of others (‘half at another’s throat’). So nowadays they seem to be not very serious (‘soppy-stern’).
This misery is passed on from one generation to the next generation(‘man hands on misery to man’), but it is different how intensively this misery reaches the next generation. The author compares this statement with a ‘coastal shelf’, because the water-level (= the misery) is sometimes low at the low tide, but it can also be very high at the (high) tide.
So in Larkin’s judgement a family does not really exist. It is only a passing on of faults and outmoded values to the next generation. The poem ends with the advice to leave home as early as possible and not to have own children of your own, probably to stop the passing on of these faults and values.

Finally it can be said Philip Larkin has a hostile understanding of the word family (perhaps because of having bad experiences or having grown up without a real family), which he makes clear with informal language ( ‘don’t have any kids‘) or slang and taboo words (’fool’ , ’soppy-stern’, ‘fuck up’) and main clauses. So the poem is written for adolescents and younger people. The author uses also a cross-rhyme to remind you always of the sentence before.
I disagree with Philip Larkin’ s ‘family-hostile’ opinion, because I think that most parents try to be better than their own parents and also to be modern. Moreover, people have become more independent in a family, so the number of single parents is increasing or it is possible for homosexuals to start a family. We have become more independent and move away from old traditions.
It is right that parents pass some of their own faults or problems to their children, but in my opinion today children become more independent and they are grown up earlier than in former years. So they develop their own personality earlier, which is often very different to their parents.
I am definitely against the advice not to have own children, because having children is a miraculous privilege some people are not blessed with, and you should also bear in mind that you would not exist, if your parents had not decided to have a child.

(S.Z., 11d, October 2006)

Violence in Education

Can we avoid violence if it is all around us?

Our world is full of violence. We always hear stories from different countries about mugging, shooting, racism, murder, cruelty, riots, war and death. In our time violence seems to be one of the main problems of the human race. History, as far back as we can go, is full of violence of all kinds, especially war with all the mass misery and massacres including rapes and robbery. You need not look far for evidence. It is certainly true to say that we live in a violent world and that the scale of suffering and death is enormously higher than it used to be in former days.

Violence is an instinct which we all have and it is necessary for survival. Some psychologists say that energy and courage are forms of violence. If violence is an instinct, it will always be with us. That is quite possible, but what about hooliganism, the actions of football fans breaking windows and terrifying people who are not involved? We seem to live in a world where we cannot avoid violence and where we cannot grow up without being influenced by it. Every day when we watch TV, listen to the radio or read the papers, we learn about acts of violence. Even little children at the age of 5 and 6 are confronted with violence nearly every day in their young lives, for example in a lot of comics and films on TV, even such as Tom & Jerry.

I can safely imagine that children are often the victims of their frustrated parents who have the feeling of having failed in their own lives, their marriage or their jobs. Every day we are confronted with headlines like this: Baby was starved by young mother! Why do teens pick up that kind of behaviour and use it against other people? This is undesirable and immoral, and there is no excuse for all them. Above all many youths with a lack of education who are sentenced to prison are real criminals, feel no remorse for their crimes. So all in all it is important to mention that the parents are frequently blamed for failing to teach their children the importance of right and wrong and personal responsibility, apart from urban life, egoistic society and no punishment. A major cause of teen violence is the failure of parents to discipline their children. Nobody sets them any limits and they have too much freedom, even though they do not do anything reasonable in their spare time.

The key to a non-violent society lies in family life. Children brought up in a safe and non-violent way are likely to grow into non-violent adults. There is also a link between the increase of violence on the TV screen and violence on the streets. A theory says that violence is the result of frustration. If we do not get what we want we become frustrated, and this frustration leads to aggressive activities. Because people experience frustration all the time, aggression will always exist. However, people often learn not to hurt others but to take it out on things, for instance by slamming a door. The only thing we can do is to find harmless ways of acting out our violence, such as sports competitions.

(O.B., 11d, October 2006)