How Does Larkin Use Juxtaposition In Mr Bleaney

Explore the ways in which Larkin in ‘Mr Bleaney’ and ‘Home is so sad’ and Abse in ‘Leaving Cardiff’ depict a sense of belonging.
In the poem ‘Mr Bleaney’ Larkin uses ordinary and mundane objects, for example the ‘bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb’ are typical everyday objects yet at the same time could be suggesting how they and Mr Bleaney are not so very different and thus go hand in hand with one another. Also Larkin depicts a semantic field of confinement when we are told of the ‘one hired box’, which maybe a metaphor of how Mr Bleaney had so few possessions and achievements that he could fit them all in single box. ‘The fusty bed’, which appeals to the readers imagery senses as repulsive and the fact that there was ‘no room for books or
For example there is the application of juxtaposition in stanza two which contrasts how ‘Mr Bleaney took [his landlady’s] bit of garden properly in hand’ before immediately relating to the boring and mundane objects of his room which when described as concrete common nouns deprived of any adjectives and delivered in a negative context suggests that Mr. Bleaney felt he did not belong in his room rather he felt more comfortable in a natural state of mind. Similarly to ‘Mr. Bleaney’ ‘Home is so sad ‘also makes use of a semantic field except in this case it is to depict feelings of loss through the lexis. ‘Sad’ ‘left’ and ‘shaped to the comfort of the last to go’ could mean that although the home belongs to the owner it is mistreated and despite its attempts to ‘win them back’ we cannot help but feel sorrow via the use of negative emotion. However, in contrast to ‘Mr. Bleaney’, ‘Home’ makes use of the imperative ‘look’ in the final stanza which leads our attention to objects about the house. The direct command brings objects that had previously been in the background to the foreground and although to