Summary
The first stanza begins with the speaker noting that he spends all day working, and then gets “half-drunk” at night. The next line continues with a sorrowful tone as the speaker wakes up in the middle of the night and sits alone in the dark. Consumed by thoughts about death and dying, the speaker is unable to think of anything else. For him, the topic of death is “arid,” or dry and old, and yet it “flashes afresh,” overwhelming him with new energy, even though he’s thought of it often before.
The second stanza finds the speaker’s mind “blank[ing]” at the “glare” of the “flash[ing]” dread referenced in the previous stanza, but not out of remorse, as Larkin clarifies. He isn’t thinking of the good deeds he could have done, or the love he hasn’t shared with others, or the time he’s wasted. His mind also isn’t blanking because of how long it can take an “only life” to escape its bad beginnings. Instead, it blanks at “the total emptiness for ever”—the endless nothingness that follows life. Furthermore, the speaker sees death coming “soon,” suggesting he’s towards the end of his life.
The third stanza begins with the speaker’s declaration that this line of thought is a “special way of being afraid” that is impossible to do away with. He lists some of the ways people have tried to escape the fear of death, but finds each of them a failure. Religion, he states, may be artistic and beautiful (a “musical brocade”), but it is outdated (“moth-eaten”) and was only made to “pretend” that people would never die. Yet the secular world doesn’t comfort the speaker, either. To him, the notion that one cannot rationally feel something they won’t feel is absurd, since the prospect of being unable to feel is itself the source of the fear.
In the fourth stanza, the “glare” continues to haunt the speaker like a blur on the edge of his vision, impossible to fully ignore even when he isn’t focused on it. Constantly feeling death’s presence forces him to reconsider every action, slowing him down. Again, he notes that death is inescapable, in sharp contrast to most things in life. This realization burns in him like a fire, especially when he’s alone and sober, without people and/or alcohol to distract him. He dismisses courage as a way to make others feel better, declaring that being brave in the face of death doesn’t stop one from dying—no matter how he faces death, he will still die.
In the final stanza, the light of the morning begins to fill the room. Yet the speaker continues to be haunted by death, the inevitability of which stands out to him just as obviously as the wardrobe in front of him does. Again, he asserts that death is omnipresent, though difficult to accept, and impossible to escape. He begins to think of the world outside, such as the working world of telephones lying in offices about to ring. Rather than bringing him joy, daybreak comes without sun, continuing the speaker’s gloom. Postmen wake up the world, bringing news from outside.
Analysis
The plainness of the speaker’s opening statement—“I work all day, and get half-drunk at night”—sets off the poem’s sense of isolation, suggesting that both working and drinking are tedious, solitary activities—the speaker isn’t out with friends drinking and having fun. Instead, at night he “see[s] what’s really always there,” the threat of ever-approaching death. While daytime is sometimes associated with clarity, here Larkin suggests that one’s nighttime thoughts are in fact more reliable. The first stanza also introduces the poem’s rhyme scheme, ABABCCDEED, and its meter, which is generally iambic pentameter except for the penultimate line of the stanza, which includes an anapestic foot in between two iambs. The penultimate line of each stanza will continue to break the pattern as the poem continues.
Throughout “Aubade,” Larkin plays with the typically positive associations readers have with light, giving it a more somber tone. This pattern is enforced by the beginning of the second stanza, where the speaker is overwhelmed by the “glare” of his dread of death—rather than being warm and calming, light is blinding. The second stanza also introduces what is the most haunting element of death for the speaker—the threat of eternal “total emptiness.” To the speaker, this is a “sure extinction,” both because death is certain and because he holds no hope of an afterlife, which he will elaborate on in the following stanza. The period in the middle of the eighth line and short ninth line that follows give emphasis to the speaker’s central fear: “Not to be here,/Not to be anywhere.”
In the third stanza, the speaker rejects both religion and rationalism as potential sources of comfort, seeing the former as deceptive and as outdated as a “moth-eaten” item of clothing and the latter as useless, since the logical assertion that one cannot feel death ignores the fact that the very inability to feel is what the speaker fears most. In this stanza, the poem’s once-plentiful punctuation grows sparse, adding a sense of urgency and hysteria as the speaker becomes carried away with all the horrors that death will bring. The penultimate line of the stanza again deviates from iambic pentameter, which underscores the sheer nothingness the speaker fears.
The speaker deals with isolation throughout the poem and seems to live a lonely life, and the fourth stanza illustrates his fear of being alone in death. In a way, everyone dies alone, even if they’re surrounded by loved ones, since they’re the only one dying. Being brave in the face of death might help others, but the speaker points out that it doesn’t do anything to stop a person from dying. Death is even more chilling because while people can reassure themselves with the fact that most things they worry about never happen, this one will, without a doubt. The rhyme between “brave” and “grave” highlights the uncomfortable unity of the two concepts, while the alliteration of “whined” and “withstood” similarly suggests that the effect is the same regardless of which approach one takes.
As dawn comes in the final stanza, the speaker finds little to be hopeful about. Death “stands plain as a wardrobe”—in other words, it’s perfectly clear, standing right in front of the speaker. The speaker’s use of “we” stands in contrast to most of the poem, which is about his personal feelings, and can be interpreted both optimistically and pessimistically. On one hand, “we” suggests that there’s a certain unity in death, since we all experience it, a shift from the speaker’s earlier fear of approaching death alone. But on the other hand, “we” transforms the speaker’s personal fear to a universal one that must haunt us all. The “rented” world underscores the impermanence of life on Earth, while the white sky with no sun illustrates the bleakness of the morning. Finally, there’s a bit of hope as the speaker sees postmen bringing news and letters and observes that in this way, they’re similar to doctors in that they help sustain life by maintaining human connections. This line suggests that we can find hope in our relationships with others, even if death hangs over us.
