Assignment Choose a poem which deals with one of the following themes: love OR the past. Discuss how effectively the poet describes his or her chosen theme, and how the poem led you to a deeper understanding of the poem. Response Phillip Larkin often begins his poems with a description of a scene he has observed, and his poem, "Afternoons," is no exception. His description of mothers and children in a playground is dreary and uneventful - a very ordinary scene. The first line of the poem sets the scene at the end of summer and the onset of autumn as written, "Summer is fading, autumn is a dreary season- all signs of life vanish and is frequently wet and miserable." Often, poets use the seasons of the year as symbols of stages in life and Larkin is suggesting that these mothers are growing older and that time is passing for them. His use of "fading" implies the mothers' gradual loss of youth is much like the seasons; unstoppable and inevitable. Larkin observes how the mothers have a routine of going to the park to give their kids a bit of leisure activity as they give them the microcosm of freedom - for example, Larkin uses the sandpit as an illusion of freedom for which the kids believe is their beach; this shows that the kids believe their hopes in life is high but the mothers know that it isn't and those kids will follow in the same cycle as them in about 20 years time. This observes the idea of the past as it is the same thing the mothers have done since their children were born as they wave goodbye to their own freedom. Larkin concludes that the women are being dominated in this failing marriage as they see their memories being swept away because they have to care for something else- the child, in which we have seen throughout the poem when we see the child "expecting to be taken away," highlighting the superior feeling over the mother. Also, the writer's word choice suggests "force- pushing," and "to the side," sugges