Here End Teeth Sparknotes

In the beginning of the poem, Philip Larkin uses nature, superstitious, and religious imagery to show the advancing movement of agnostics in the world. In the first lines of the poem, the persona enters a church and observes all of the religious items decorating the chapel, but he only sees the religious place of prayer as, “Another church: matting, seats, and stone,/ And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut/ For Sunday, brownish now;” (3-5). The speaker concludes that this church looks just like all of the rest, and recognizes nothing unique or special about it. The persona refers to religious texts as “little books,” leading to the assumption that the narrator has little respect for religion and its believers. Larkin uses nature imagery …show more content…
The speaker mocks the tradition, treating it like a joke. The persona’s negligence towards religious traditions shows that he could care less about ancient rituals. After wandering around the church, the speaker strolls to the lectern, speaks a few lines from The Bible, and upon finishing, he, “pronounce[s]/ ‘Here endeth’ much more loudly than [he’d] meant./ The echoes snigger briefly” (15-16). After a reading of The Bible, followers often say “Here endeth” to show that the religious reading ended. The persona personifies his echos, making them laugh at the idea of endings in a religious place because he believes that religion itself will soon come to an end. The speaker also implies that the ineffectuality of this piece of The Bible makes his echoes “snigger” because he sees the ancient text as a book full of emptiness. He views the plot of The Bible as a storyline, not a reality. In fact, the persona believes that many other people share this view with him. His agnostic vision contributes to his viewpoint that the church will someday end. Philip utilizes his narrator to display the current distrust in the church and its values by creating a speaker that mocks many of religion’s lasting traditions and