Essential Beauty - Larkin

Essential Beauty is one of the poems by Larkin to do with the modern world and looks at advertisement and how it dominates our lives. From within the title 'Essential Beauty' we come to understand that beauty must have to be essential within this modern world, this reinforces the idea that advertisement to do with appearance consumes us and is all around us. There is evidence of this from within stanza one where the advertisement seems to 'block the ends of streets with giant loaves'. From within the first stanza we understand that it consists of advertisement of consumer goods that as people we are easily able to consume because the advertisement of it is all around us. It is also described as 'sharply-pictured' suggesting that advertisement conveys an artificial or ultra-real message, because it is advertisement it acts as a facade of the product because it exaggerates the products benefits. We also seem to get a contrast between the rich and the poor within this poem through the quote 'High above the gutter a silver knife sinks into golden butter'. The rhyming scheme of butter and gutter helps establish to us the contrast between them. This quote could also act as a hyperbole for something excessive or artificial which is exactly what advertising is. Towards the end of this stanza it seems as though Larkin is critical of the materialism that advertisement promotes through the quote 'Well-balanced families, in fine midsummer weather, owe their smiles, their cars, even their youth, to that small cube each hand stretches towards'. Through this we get the connotations of this picturesque advertisement, something that could not be real in the real world as advertising's job is to exaggerate the benefits of a product.

In stanza two it is clear that advertisement seems to dominate our lives when 'They dominate outdoors'. Through this we could interpret that they are ruining the landscape and through this the essential beauty of the natural world. We also get the sense that advertisement makes us feel inadequate through our own 'imperfect eyes', after all advertisement is unrealistic, so as humans we aspire to be something through advertisement that is unrealistic. We also get the sense of the loss of innocence when we become exposed to advertisement through when the boy is 'puking his heart out in the gents'. It could also mean that advertisement is sharply contrasted with the facts of sickness and mortality contained within the real world. We also get the reinforcement that advertisement is contradictory or false through when the 'dying smokers sense'. Maybe the essential things in life may kill us one day and this is also represented through the last quote of the poem 'smiling and recognising and going black'.