Critical Appreciation

This lesson shows how to write a critical appreciation of Philip Larkin's "Church Going". It gives a six-part plan, a model appreciation, the points on which readers differ, and advice on judging the poem's strengths.

A critical appreciation is not a summary but a reasoned judgement of how a poem works and how well it works. For "Church Going" a strong answer introduces the poet and the poem, states the subject and theme, comments on structure and form, analyses language and devices, describes tone and mood, and ends with an evaluation. The lesson sets out this plan under the memory aid A.S.P.E.C.T., gives a full model appreciation, and discusses the questions on which readers differ: whether the ending is a hopeful affirmation or a resigned acceptance, and whether the plain style limits the poem or gives it its force.

A critical appreciation asks you to do more than retell a poem. You must show what the poem is about, how its writer has made it, and how well it works. For "Church Going" the examiner expects you to move through the same stages each time: introduce the poem, state the subject and theme, comment on structure, analyse language and devices, describe tone and mood, and give a reasoned judgement. This lesson gives a plan, a model answer and the main critical questions.

The plan: A.S.P.E.C.T.

1. A: Author and poem. Name the poet, the poem and its place. Larkin's "Church Going" was published in The Less Deceived (1955). It is a meditative poem by a poet often linked with the Movement of the 1950s, whose writers valued plain language, ordinary experience and ironic honesty.
2. S: Subject and theme. The subject is a sceptical man's visit to an empty church. The themes are the decline of religious faith, the future of churches, mortality and the human need for seriousness.
3. P: Presentation (form and structure). Seven nine-line stanzas in loose iambic pentameter with a repeated rhyme pattern; four stages (a visit, a turn, speculation and a conclusion); a movement of pronouns from I to we to our.
4. E: Expression (language and devices). Colloquial diction set against the technical vocabulary of the church; sensory imagery; personification and onomatopoeia; irony; the double-meaning title; symbolism; rhetorical questions; the long closing sentence.
5. C: Colour (tone and mood). Wry and offhand at first, then candid, sombre and finally grave; a mood that moves from hushed and mildly comic to reverent.
6. T: Total effect (your judgement). What the poem achieves, how well it achieves it, and why you think so.

A model critical appreciation

Philip Larkin's "Church Going", published in The Less Deceived (1955), is a meditative poem in which a sceptical cyclist stops at an empty church and, in the course of a short visit, asks what will become of such buildings when belief has died. The subject is simple, but the theme is large: the decline of religious faith in the modern age, and the question whether anything of lasting value survives it.

The poem has seven stanzas of nine lines, with the same rhyme pattern in each, and it moves in four stages. The first two stanzas narrate the visit in the present tense with a comic, offhand tone. The third turns from the speaker's own behaviour to a general question. The middle stanzas speculate about superstition, ruin and the last visitor. The final stanza answers with a calm statement about the church's lasting seriousness. This movement from the particular to the general gives the poem its shape, and the shift of pronoun from I to we to our mirrors it.

Larkin's language is the poem's chief strength. The diction is colloquial, so the speaker sounds like a real person, while the technical words of the church (font, lectern, pyx) show that he knows the furniture of religion without sharing its beliefs. The images are concrete: the thud of the door, the brown flowers, the echoes that seem to snigger at his play-acting. Irony protects the speaker from solemnity. He removes his cycle-clips because he has no hat, and he calls the visit hardly worth the trouble while admitting that he stops often. The double meaning of the title, the habit of going to church and the church going out of use, sums up the poem's irony in two words.

The tone changes as the poem proceeds. It begins wry and self-mocking, becomes honest and puzzled in stanza 3, turns sombre in the picture of the ruin, and finally grows grave and dignified. The last six lines are a single sentence that moves steadily towards the dead buried around the church, and the slow syntax carries conviction without sentimentality. The speaker does not return to faith. He affirms instead a permanent human hunger to be serious, which the church has served and which he finds worth respecting.

The poem is not without its difficulties: some readers find the final stanza more abstract and less vivid than the opening. But its combination of humour, honesty and seriousness is rare. By letting an unbeliever reach respect for the church without pretending to belief, Larkin gives the poem a credibility that a devout or a merely mocking speaker could not have.

Where readers differ

• Affirmation or acceptance? Some readers see the last stanza as a hopeful affirmation: the church survives as the home of a permanent human need. Others see a resigned acceptance: the church is valued for what it stands for and not for any truth it teaches, so the poem is closer to an elegy than a hymn. The text supports both readings, so a good answer states a view and defends it.
• Is the speaker Larkin? Treat the speaker as a persona. His unease, his ignorance and his irony are part of the poem's art and need not be read as a direct report of the poet's beliefs.
• Does the plain style limit the poem? Some readers think the quiet, conversational voice makes the ending more believable. Others find the last stanza more abstract and less vivid than the opening. A balanced answer can note the contrast between the concrete early stanzas and the abstract final stanza and judge it a deliberate change of register that suits the move from observation to conclusion.

Strengths worth praising

• The voice: a convincing ordinary speaker, honest enough to admit his ignorance.
• The structure: each stanza prompts the next, so the poem reads like a mind at work.
• The ending: reached by reasoning, not by sudden conversion, and therefore earned.
• The humour: it keeps the poem from sentimentality and makes the final seriousness more credible.
• The title: a double meaning that sums up the theme in two words.

Common weaknesses in answers

• Retelling the poem stanza by stanza without comment.
• Naming a device without explaining its effect.
• Treating the poem as wholly religious or wholly anti-religious.
• Confusing the speaker with the poet.
• Ending with a bare compliment such as "it is a good poem" without reasons.

Writing tips

Give each aspect of the plan its own paragraph, open each paragraph with a clear point, and end with a reasoned judgement. Refer to stanzas and lines by number and describe images in your own words.