Nothing To Be Said - Larkin

From within the first stanza of this poem we get a negative portrayal of life. The whole of this stanza highlights the fact that wherever you come from in the world and whatever we do with our lives you will die one day. This reinforces Larkin's idea that is there any point in making the right life choices if we are all just going to die one day. Larkin also comments that 'life is slowly dying' reinforcing this idea that everyone is slowly dying in life and no one not even religion can prevent this from happening. This view further reinforces Larkin's beliefs as a person.

The second stanza represents the view that we do stuff in life to deter from the idea of death. This is represented through the quote 'So are their separate ways of building, benediction, measuring love and money, ways of slowly dying'. 'So are their separate ways' links to this idea of life choices, that people do different things in life but at the end of it all we all die. The quote 'The day spent hunting pig or holding a garden-party' comes across as fairly colloquial. This could suggest that the everyday stuff or characteristics we have as human beings are slowly forgotten when we die, which suggests that the things you have done in your life are slowly forgotten once you are dead.

The last stanza represents the time span of life itself. 'Others it leaves' conveys the idea that 'it' is life, in this case, Larkin describes life rather abstractly suggesting that there is no point to life. We also get the circularity of this poem through it ending with 'Nothing to be said' this could suggest a lack of progression in life and this is why in this poem Larkin views it negatively. Everyone seems to follow the crowd almost which makes life pointless so therefore there is 'Nothing to be said'

This poem could link to the poem by Abse A Wall as the wall in that poem is represented as having no purpose as it just stands in the middle of a field, life is represented in this poem as being pointless similar to how the wall is represented.