The Whitsun Weddings

The Whitsun Weddings is about the persona sitting on a train watching as the couples board the train ready to go and get married. It is through his vision of how the wedding parties are shown to the reader. One of the main themes of the poem shows quite an observant side with quite physical descriptions which changes to more abstract ideas towards the end. Another theme incorporated into this poem is religion which is shown with the weddings being on the Whit Sunday, the seventh Sunday after Easter. Their is a continued use of enjambment throughout the poem which can be shown in "watching us go, as if out on the end". This suggests that he Larkin is trying to show movement not just through the words but the structure that the poem is written in. This movement is constant which is reflected in the flow through the different stanzas. There is a slight rhyme scheme throughout the poem however there are some exceptions to this. The rhyme pattern is line 1 rhymes with line 3, line 2 rhymes with line 4 and line 7 rhymes with line 10. This can be seen in the first stanza "getting away...Saturday". However, there are exceptions to this pattern in stanzas 4, with line 2 and 4 not rhyming and in stanza 7, with lines 1 and 3 not rhyming which can be seen in "farcical...funeral". One of the things that I found interesting about the language used in this poem is the different meanings that can be interpreted from what Larkin has written. This can be shown in "becoming rain". This can suggest different meanings such as the feeling of new life as rain helps things grow but also the "rain" can suggest tears but also floods which cause ruin presenting a more gloomy aspect. This can also link to pathetic fallacy as at the start it was extremely hot, however by the end there is a rain shower suggesting something bad is going to happen.