Home Is So Sad Poem Analysis

At first glance, a "house" and a "home" are the same words. Both describe a place where someone lives, but with a deeper look at the words, we find that a house is simply just a building. A home is much more complicated than that. It is filled with objects and memories, which grow and change along with the family inside of it. Home is a place we come back to after a long day's work, the place where we go to seek shelter and protection. When the world outside is constantly changing the home remains constant. It is "home, sweet home". This popular saying shows a warm and comforting light on a home, giving it personality and feeling, the main factors that distinguish it from a house. In Philip Larkin's poem "Home Is So Sad", the narrator describes

This is the case in Philip Larkin's poem "Home Is So Sad". Without the family, the heart and soul of this home, there is no character or meaning left, nor purpose to keep living as a character. The home views itself as a vessel or vase for a family, and when the family gone, its fundamental identity is destroyed. The home is not just sad, but despondent and without hope. A home with no heart and no family is much more sad than one with a despondent family, or an unhappy heart. The home mourns and wishes for its family because without them, it will be what it was before, a house. Just like the empty vase, one of the few objects that remain inside, it has lost all meaning without life pumping through its core. Larkin shows this loss through a depressing personification, separated and detached tone, and the slow crumbling structure. The home is not yet a house because it is still filled with memories of the past, which it is desperately grasping onto. Those memories - the pictures, the cutlery, the music in the piano, and that vase, are the only things that remain. They are the home's last hope for life when all else has disappeared, the home's last hope from avoiding a depressing transformation back into a