Critical Analysis of Church Going
“Church Going” by philip larkin Church Going, written in 1954, is a monologue in which the speaker discusses the futility and the utility of going to a church. It clearly reveals the social context of the time when it was written. It was a time of general decline in the attendance in churches which had begun to take place in 1945. Philip Larkin, a contemporary poet, wrote ‘Church Going’ after World War II, when the shattering influence of war was at its peak and there were constant social changes. Poet noticed the people’s dependence on the church was fading, which leads us to the two possible meanings of the title ‘Church Going’, the first being the weekly act of going to a church, or the fading away of the church. The poet himself wasn’t a believer in the church, he was agnostic and indifferent, and the speaker in the poem could be the poet himself or a persona adopted by him. The poem talks about the speaker’s thoughts as he enters a vast, empty church and wonders what wil...
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