For many, leaving home is a blessing. For others, leaving home is a hardship. Sometimes, it falls somewhere in between.
Philip Larkin’s Home Is So Sad captures how the home holds onto the past, grasping for the times that once existed. I was introduced to this poem during a seminar a few months ago, and I can confidently say I have thought about it almost everyday since. Despite the poem’s minimal two stanzas and ten lines, Larkin manages to depict the emotional gravity of places and objects well-loved or well-worn.
As the youngest of four to move out of home to go to university, this poem tugs on certain strings other literature hasn’t managed to. It portrays the symbiosis of people and place—how humans and their homes cling to each other: ‘It stays as it was left, / Shaped to the comfort of the last to go / As if to win them back.’ The empty home remains unchanged, reflecting the past inhabitants and memories, as affected by the change as the people who left. These lines are a reminder of the challenge of becoming uncomfortable, a reminder of the homesickness that nearly had me drop out of first year. In this way, Larkin demonstrates the difficulty of moving on, leaving old places and people.
In class, this poem was discussed in relation to the literary art of ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling.’ While Larkin initially tells the reader, ‘Home is so sad,’ he goes on to illustrate the images of the home that make it sad: ‘You can see how it was: / Look at the pictures and the cutlery. / The music in the piano stool.’ Therefore, as readers, we can fill in the gaps of meaning through visualisation, and understand why the abandoned objects are sad in an intimate or personal way—humans make a mark on everything they touch. Ending with simply, ‘That vase,’ leaves the image of an empty home reverberating in your head.
This poem is ultimately about loss and decay, allowing readers to have diverse experiences of home and grieve the passage of time. Home can be big or small—the house one grew up in, the safety of a bedroom, the comfort of a person. There will always be reminders in life, tangible or abstract, that stress the profundity of a loss.
“The Golden Glint of Sunset, A regular neighbourhood in old downtown Anchorage — probably built around the second world war with Saltbox style houses, houses, buildings, mountains, trees, snow, Christmas Eve, Anchorage Alaska USA” by Wonderlane is licensed under CC BY 2.0