17 pages • 34 minutes read

The Explosion

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1974

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Lark

Given that Larkin could have used any regional bird’s eggs to make the point about nature’s continuity, he chooses a lark. Since Chaucer, in a line of poets that would include Shakespeare and the great Romantics, the lark has found a niche in British poetry as a joyous symbol of regeneration, a blithe spirit that embodies the glory of the sunrise and the sheer thrill of new beginnings that is available every morning, celebrated by the lark’s distinctive song, as lilting and breezy as carefree as the bird itself. As James Baker argues, “no bird is…more airy and carefree or ventures higher” (Baker, James V. “The Lark in English Poetry.” University of Nebraska Press. 1950, p. 1).

Thus, the lark symbolizes the bold embrace of hope and nature’s bold reminder with every sunrise of the self-serving irony of despair. That the poem closes with the lark eggs still intact despite being tampered with by the miner gifts the poem with its quiet optimism. The poem reassures a world regularly upended by catastrophe, routinely stunned by accidents great and small, that tomorrow there will indeed be a glorious sunrise.

The Cows

We want the mine explosion, like all accidents great or small, to mean something appropriately big. The cows that look up briefly from their feeding when they feel the “tremor” (Line 13) of the explosion below ground symbolize nature’s indifference to the tragedies of humanity. Only our self-sustaining sense of our own importance burdens such events with the urgent need to matter. We reconstruct accidents into tragedies. Larkin, however, keeps us distant from the miners. He could easily have recreated the explosion far down in the mine, the chaos, the noise, the panic, and in turn manipulated our feelings, which would in turn elevate the catastrophe into a tragedy. That he elects to reveal the traumatic impact of that explosion through the bland reactions of cows in a field that stop their chewing but only “for a second” (Line 14) suggests humanity’s insignificance. The explosion that kills so many, that causes friends and family such heartache, that explosion barely disturbs the world even at the moment of its detonation.

The Shadows

Using the accidental death of so many miners, the poem argues that death can come anytime, that death follows its own logic, and that, should we die in an accident, the day we die might very well seem like every other day of our lives. That means that every day might be our last. Live in that world, Larkin challenges. You just never know. Our lives, sadly, are not short stories where foreshadowing prepares us for what’s ahead.

The miners head to work as they have done most of their adult lives. The morning sun dapples the slagheaps along the road to the mine entrance. “Fathers brothers, nicknames laughter” (Line 11), the line capturing the careless, reckless routine of their everyday morning. The only jarring detail in the approach to the mine, however, is gently, quietly noted in the second line, there are “[s]hadows pointed towards the pithead.” The shadows so carelessly motioning toward the mine entrance are the only thing out of sync with the sunny morning-world of carefree men going to work. The shadows are easy to ignore, easy to miss—the miners do. But we see them, and the shadows become Larkin’s gift to us. With them, Larkin reminds us to live every day as if it is crossed by shadows.