"Talking in Bed" and "Metamorphosis"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how the poem by Philip Larkin, "Talking in Bed" discusses alienation and isolation from humankind. It looks at how the poem can be compared to Franz Kafka's, "The Metamorphosis", because it deals with isolation and estrangement from one's own comfort. In this case, his home life. It discusses how both works deal with ontological issues- the state of being- and present themselves in a bleak, murky tone and how Larkin and Kafka both share experiences of isolation and alienation from their societies.

From the Paper:

"The sense of broken communication is well displayed through the structure and form of the poem. The iambic pentameter and the three-tercet rhyme scheme (aba, cac, dcd, eee) portray the absence of continuity and the broken-up nature of the couple's discourse. Each stanza in the poem, with exception given to the third stanza, contains end-stopped lines. This form displays the isolation of each stanza in relation to the couple isolating themselves from one another. "At the unique distance from isolation/It becomes still more difficult to find" (Larkin, 9-10) discusses the unique isolation the couple is faced with and contains no end-stop punctuation to separate the two verses. "

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