Toads
Phillip Larkin
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison –
Just for paying a few bills!
That’s out of proportion.
Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
They don’t end as paupers;
Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
they seem to like it.
Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets – and yet
No one actually starves.
Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that’s the stuff
That dreams are made on:
For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,
And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.
I don’t say, one bodies the other
One’s spiritual truth;
But I do say it’s hard to lose either,
When you have both.
Questions
Read the whole poem. Explain in your own words the poet’s feelings towards work.
With reference to sound techniques and word choice or imagery, explain how the poet uses this language in stanzas 3-5 to give the impression he does not really respect the people in these stanzas.
By making reference to the use of language, explain how the poet uses the image of the toad to make different points in stanzas 1-2 and 7.
Read stanzas 8 and 9, and explain how effectively they connect to ideas and themes introduced earlier in the poem.
What are your thoughts on ‘Toads’? To what extent do you find the poem as a whole effective? You should make at least three clear points, backed-up by precise reference to the poem and identification of the techniques used (e.g. quotation).
You can, if you wish, use detail already mentioned in earlier answers but try to consider some additional aspects.
