A Study of Reading Habits :: essays papers

A Study of Reading Habits A Study of Reading Habits, is Philip Larkins poetic warning that escapism and ignoring human race only makes real life less fulfilling. Larkin develops this idea via a bank clerk who prefers to go out from life rather than deal with it, as well as through changing use of language and subtle irony. Larkins just about direct expression of his warning comes through the bank clerks cause with escapism through books. The narrator reveals his changing attitudes toward books in trey stanzas, representing three stages in his life childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. As a child, reading as an escape en abled the narrator to feel better about most things short of instill (line 2). As an adolescent, books continued to be a form of escape for him, this metre for his unfulfilled sexual desires. However, as an adult now, the narrator embodies Larkins warning. He is shrilly and resentful that life is less glamorous than books, now only able to relate to the secondary, less important characters. The method he once utilise to escape now makes reality painfully obvious.The idealized reality that the narrator dreams of at each lay in his life is reflected in the writes language use. The description of childhood escape contains clichs engraft in childrens adventure books, such as keep cool, the sr. right hook, and dirty dogs. As an adolescent, the descriptions are more mysterious and sexual, including references to genus Dracula and to rape. The descriptions as an adult are the most casual and slangy, suggesting a eliminate in the narrators intellect, the result of complete indifference. At this point he sees reality for all that it is, and finds this unfulfilling compared to his earlier idealizations.The author drives this point interior(a) with a number of ironies throughout the poem. The title suggests a formal paper quite the opposite of the colloquial language Larkin uses. This symbolizes the motif that what appears to be dependable (formal), may in fact be bad (casual). Also, the narrators values decline as he gains knowledge, going from good to ugliness to indifference.