Philip Larkin
...a major poet. Philip Larkin liked to write about everyday experiences that were most of the time autobiographical. “The Whitsun Weddings” is about a train journey on a hot Saturday afternoon. Many newly wed couples boarded the train, leaving their families behind on the platform. Larkin watches this and finds a deeper meaning within marriages. He soon realizes that there is a relationship between marriages and the journey of life. As the married couples joined everyone on the moving train, they joined in on a journey of moving on in life. Philip Larkin focuses his writing on the themes of: time, fantasy and real life, social isolation, marriage, love, religion, and death. A prime example of the theme of marriage is found in “The Whitsun Weddings”, where Larkin writes about an event he has just experienced. Philip Larkin was a post- World War II poet whose style of writing was influenced by William Butler Yeats and Thomas Hardy. “Larkin himself, in keep with his H...