As Bad as a Mile - Larkin

As Bad as a Mile is one of the negative belief poems by Larkin. From within the first stanza the 'core' of this apple could be a metaphor for human life. The fact that it is 'skidding' though could suggest something unstable. The apple is a metaphor for the journey of human life. Larkin is representing the view that each and everyone of us are unstable when it comes to making choices in life, maybe we make the wrong ones.

In the second stanza Larkin describes this action as showing 'less and less of luck, and more and more of failure'. Maybe as we grow up we become more of a failure in life, Larkin is making a comment overall that humans fail in the everyday routine of life. The fact that the apple is unbitten suggests that many of us never experience what life is, we have not bitten into the ripe side of life, however instead we fail in life and don't try hard enough.