CRITIACAL EVALUATION "Ambulances" by Philip Larkin uses the every day incident

of someone being taken away in an ambulance to convey the ideas of human life.
The poem discusses the idea of the closeness of death; it's randomness and its
inevitability. Philip Larkin uses this everyday occurrence to lead to the general or
universal statement. Death will come to us one day or another day.

Death come to any kerb means it can come to anywhere. The use of the word
"emptiness" is used to continue the idea that we will all die, with the repetition of
"and" adding weight to emphasise this. By using "we" in "under all we do" suggests
that the futility of life, that is Larkins theme throughout, applies to the patient,
himself as well as the reader death will come to us all no matter who we are or what
we do, it is just a matter of time. I can see where Larkin is coming from but I believe
that all we can do is the best we can with the time given to us. We have to
understand the choices we have already made and make sure that when the day
comes we can make it across the river of death to reach the other side: death
should never be unexpected, you should be ready for it. The reason is in Larkin's
own thinking, death comes to us all it's only a matter of time. . It modestly and
devoutly collects evidence of ordinary life to create a truth which can be universally
acknowledged. he man, who has been carried to the hospital by the ambulance, had
led a meaningful life which was a mixture of family relationships and an observance
of the fashions of the time. But that life has now come to an end and has, in fact,
lost all its meaning. Even the greatest drama of lifethe unique random blend of
families and fashionscannot continue for ever.aubade

The first two stanzas of the poem contain vivid and realistic imagery of the
ambulances threading their way through the streets of a city possibly at noon-time
when there are many loud noises coming from the traffic and from the crowds of
people. When an ambulance comes to a stop, women coming from the shops look at
the wild white face of the sick man who is being taken away to a hospital. The
remaining three stanzas of this poem contain the poets reflections and meditations
on the sad fate which awaits all of us. The entire life of an individual loses its
meaning in the face of his approaching death. What gives to the poem Ambulances
its impressive authority is its relentless insistence that all streets in time are
visited, and its closing assertion that to be taken away by an ambulance brings
closer what is left to come, /And dulls to distance all we are.

atti Though Hughes:s- wasteland'

is-narrox^, deep: and pessimistic, like Eliot's; it offers:
some hope of purgation to those who do not Join the
"machine" of industrial society, remaining faithful to
their'human natures*. Thence our conclusion that Hughes
is.; not violent for-the sake of violence, but rather as;
a-means; to arouse man to the de-humanized, mechanized
world in which he became a puppet In his poetry Ted

Hughes' communicates; all the tension and disorder he

finds: in the His themes are the material which makes life itself:
love,
sex, birth, life and death, among men and animals, in a
broken, decaying society- He expresses these themes in a
stark, bare, direct, massive language, rather unusual in
poetry The Hawk in the Rain^
LHPercal. Wodwo and Crow as foci within which to examine
the theme of his poetical "violence"./
In the
fifties there was a school of poetry in Britain called
"The Movement"5 whose poems were characterized by
decorum,, sobriety and domesticity of tone and subject
matter Their language was gentle, polished, charming
This pride causes Oedipus to press further into Laiuss murder by finding out more
information. He brings in a blind prophet by the name of Teiresia, who later tells him
that he, in fact, is responsible for Laiuss murder. His pride causes him to be
ignorant to the hints and clues around him that support the prophecy. Oedipus has
good intentions to find out who the murderer is, but in the end, this aspiration leads
to his downfall.