ipl-logo

Stone Church Damaged By A Bomb Poem

1065 Words5 Pages

The character fails to reveal his respect as he “utters God’s name in church unconsciously, and he is just as unconscious when he takes off his cycle-clips to illustrate his respect, since he does not wear a hat” (Rácz). The bicyclist uttering God’s name in a disgraceful way reveals his lack of knowledge for the religious culture. Along with his language, his gesture of taking of his cycle-clips like it is a hat is almost disrespectful and mocking the religious decorum. As the poem progresses, Larkin utilizes the bicyclist to reveal his thoughts, almost in a mocking tone, that: “When churches fall completely out of us / What we shall turn them into… Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?” (Larkin, Collected Poems 58). Larkin chooses to …show more content…

He states the opposing religions only causes war against each other. Larkin creates an image of: “A prayer killed into stone / Among the always-dying trees” (Larkin, Collected Poems 164). Larkin reveals his image of people in a church praying, and suddenly a bomb drops to destroy the church. The image explains the situation in current day life with wars over religion. Larkin reveals, “Suffering does not receive a Christian interpretation… since he does not believe it leads to redemption” (Rácz). He states that people will cover the situations with failed attempts of positivity with religion. Throughout Larkin's poems: “The speakers of such poems [who turn to God] are searching for their own place in a world deserted by God, and are trying to preserve what is left of human dignity” (Rácz). The present day world deserts God, and the very few who remain to worship him fill themselves with false happiness. Larkin concludes the poem with the question: “Though none, O none sees what patterns it is making?” (Larkin, Collected Poems 164). Everyone is oblivious to the pattern of religious fighting. As these churches are being destroyed they are focusing more on the building itself rather than the God. The religious people focus on “[t]he building, we not, not the God it stands for” (Mackinnon). The wars and fights over religion causes the followers to lose sense of the pattern and focus on other aspects rather than their religion. Larkin, although he does not believe in religion, states the people in power of the organizations cause the fracases on

Show More
Related
1341 Words | 6 Pages

'Larkin strips away the facades and exposes the empty reality of social ideals. ' To what extent do you agree with this statement? Many of Larkin’s poems are seen to heavily discuss the dependence of individuals on social ideals, regardless of their insubstantiality, due to their desire to believe in something – no matter how unreachable it may seem. In the poems ‘Essential Beauty’, ‘An Arundel Tomb’ and ‘Sunny Prestatyn’, Larkin expresses the lack of substantial reality behind declaring privilege as something for everyone, and also by establishing the reactions individuals experience upon facing the reality of life. However, this allows individuals to also be aware of the necessity of having something to work towards in life, proving that despite the lack of much feasibility, social ideals still prove to have some meaning.

Read More
2101 Words | 9 Pages

The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don’t know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.” This text shows how society is corrupt, for multiple reasons. Not only are families who kill each other going to a sacred place together under a temporary cease-fire, they are also hearing a preacher speak about brotherly love and saying that it is a good sermon.

Read More
540 Words | 3 Pages

Church is a place that is symbolized as sacred and safe, but many view point were changed that day. As the mother heard the bomb explode, "her eyes grew wet and wild" (line

Read More
884 Words | 4 Pages

Twain further emphasizes this association by discussing the musical connection; “by an organ burst that shook the house” and fervent nature of the attendees who responded with “glowing eyes and beating hearts” and subsequently “poured out that tremendous invocation” (Twain, 1905). The war brewing on the forefront of Americans’ minds draws society into the grasp of the church trying to escape mortality by gaining the blessing of God himself. Although in most cases the pastor is the focal point of the church, his war prayers and support of the troops transitions him from the leader of the church to the leader of the war movement itself. Currently, pastors do not only extol the virtues of military service, but utilize religion to justify the advances of the United States religious hegemony.

Read More
1268 Words | 6 Pages

This intolerable behaviour caused “ten thousand” to “hang”, castigating readers who enforce their religious beliefs on others with this connotation. These poems serve as compelling reminders to contemporary audiences about the importance of truthfulness and righteous judgement, and discerning the

Read More
1634 Words | 7 Pages

Marked by alienation and uncertainty, one 's spiritual and intellectual life could no longer find adequate support in the Christian idea of community, with a limited space for individual human experience . Thus, in years leading to the Great War, we ascertain a new culture that would attest to the esoteric disillusionment of the previous decades, and promote a distinctly Gnostic type of self-exploration. Modernist artists exemplified a new sense of creative imagination, in which―through the crisis of the modern world―a new spiritual sensibility could be achieved. What Gnosticism viewed as an inherent struggle of light and darkness now corresponded to the Archonic world of material exploitation, industrialisation and a fragmentation of the individual Self, depicted through intellectual and artistic imagery―a creative form of

Read More
489 Words | 2 Pages

By reading a passage from the primary source of the opposing religion, the viewer learns how the adversary thinks. The disciples of this cruel and racist religion should be defeated in order to stop their despairing rule. “…the enemy represents an evil force and therefore needs to be stopped,” (Spence and Navarro, 116). To contrast their violent religion, we see one throughout America. There is a view of how it is during the sermon, but also when the mother speaks of her son’s experience in the army.

Read More
598 Words | 3 Pages

in Poetry Criticism. Ed. Michelle Lee. Vol. 71.

Read More
920 Words | 4 Pages

They moved to Roman Catholicism as they thought that the evil that troubled Western Civilization had crept with the inception of Protestantism during the Renaissance. The difference in attitude to orthodox Christianity between the modernists and the Movement poets can be viewed in Larkin’s “Church Going”. This is the representative poem of the Movement group which shows the attitude towards religion and social identity. Larkin does not believe in the idea of an afterlife. In his “Next Please”, he suggests that in the wake of death no water breed or break.

Read More
520 Words | 3 Pages

This devoutly religious reading is further presented in the marginal annotations through references to religious figures such as “Josephus, and the Platonic Constentanio-politan, Michael Psellus” However the frequent “silence” within the poem may

Read More
1483 Words | 6 Pages

Numerous poems are an interpretation of religion. This specific genre of the poetry is included the content based on a relationship between human and the significant superior or God. However, the religious verse is not always considering specific religion. It can also, focused on the criticism about the limitation that is caused by religious belief. One of the reason is that sometimes individuals are not happy about the consequences.

Read More
813 Words | 4 Pages

The references to God is a recurring theme in the poem represented by dialogue. With the continuous citations to God in the poem, it is made clear that the author’s target audience are Christians as Christians have a strong belief in God. Because of this, the main message of the presence of God is further and more effectively expressed due to the Christian’s strong and eternal belief in God’s presence and existence. Their everlasting faith and belief in God is perennial, just like the presence of

Read More
698 Words | 3 Pages

Phyllis McGinley’s “Trinity Place” is a piece of the twentieth century featuring pigeons, a bird recognizable by its inhabiting of cities. Grazing on the grass of New York, this municipal bird raises connotations of filth and disrespect. Taking this idea a step further, McGinley proposes that the Church, represented by pigeons in her poem, is a place of narcissism. Through the use of symbolism, allusion, and repetition, McGinley emphasizes that the Church should prioritize the helpless over themselves.

Read More
574 Words | 3 Pages

“Life begins at your comfort zone.” Neale Walsh once said. Many share this same outlook in life while others may say otherwise. Al Young shares the same belief in life as Neale Walsh in his short poem. “For Poets”, by Al Young, is an uplifting and inspirational poem.

Read More
989 Words | 4 Pages

The poet enters into a tacit agreement with the public with the declaration that he will avoid an esoteric language, use words in the sense with which the public is familiar and employ traditional patterns of verse, easily intelligible to the public. He favors a rational progression of thought and a logical structure. He seems to agree with Ivor Winter’s tenet that a poem is an organization of language with precise meaning of words embodying a value and a judgment passed by the poet himself on it. Thus it can be easily perceived that the Movement has staged a rebellion against the modern poetry of 1920s, represented by Eliot and Pound. Philip Larkin, the illustrious poet of the Movement declares that he has been most influenced by the poetry which he has enjoyed- that of Hardy, Owen, Christina Rossetti and Auden.

Read More

More about Stone Church Damaged By A Bomb Poem

Open Document