Practice Questions

This is a practice-centred lesson on “The Whitsun Weddings”. It gives you a one-page recall sheet, shows how to read question types and command words, and works through a bank of short, stanza-based and long questions with model answer points.

Knowing Larkin's poem is not the same as answering questions on it well. This lesson builds the habits that turn knowledge into marks. You begin with a sixty-second sheet of the facts you must have at your fingertips, then learn to read command words, to plan an answer and to use point, evidence and effect. You then work through three banks of questions on the poem: short answers, stanza-focused questions that point you to line numbers in your textbook, and long answers with outlines. The lesson ends with the commonest mistakes and a five-day revision routine you can follow before an examination.

This lesson is built around practice. You already know what happens in “The Whitsun Weddings”, how its tone changes and how it can be appreciated critically. Here you learn to turn that knowledge into clear, well-aimed answers. Each section gives you something to use: a recall sheet, a method, three banks of questions with model points, a list of mistakes and a revision plan. Nothing here asks you to reproduce lines from memory. Every question points to the poem by stanza and line number, and every model answer describes the poem in its own words.

1. Your sixty-second poem sheet

Be able to write this from memory before you attempt any question.

• Poet and book: Philip Larkin (1922–1985); the poem is the title poem of his 1964 collection.
• Occasion and setting: the Saturday of the Whitsun weekend, a holiday popular for weddings; a slow, hot afternoon train from Hull to London.
• Speaker: a solitary traveller who tells the journey in the first person and the past tense; an observer, not a member of any wedding party.
• Event: at station after station, wedding parties see off newly married couples who board the train. It begins mostly empty and ends full of couples, about twelve in all.
• Form: eight stanzas of ten lines each, eighty lines in all; rhyme scheme ababcdecde in every stanza; mostly iambic pentameter with a short second line in each stanza; long sentences that run across line and stanza ends.
• Structure: departure and landscape (stanzas 1–2), the weddings noticed and the families described (3–4), the couples boarding and the train filling (5–6), the approach to London and the hour the couples share (7), arrival and the closing image (8).
• Tone: ironic detachment, then amused observation, then sympathy, then a lyrical and guarded hope.
• Themes: marriage as a ritual and a turning point; the observer drawn in; strangers sharing an experience; time and change; ordinary lives made significant; fertility and renewal.
• Key images: sunlit heat at the start; the crowds on the platforms; the closing volley of arrows that vanishes from view and comes down as rain.

2. Know your question types

• Short answer: one fact, or one fact and a reason, in a line or two. Do not write an essay.
• Stanza-based or extract-based question: you are sent to a stanza or lines and asked what is happening, what a feature does, or what feeling it carries. In this lesson, read the stanza in your textbook first.
• Paragraph answer: a developed explanation of a point, a device or a change, in a paragraph built from point, evidence and effect.
• Long answer: a discussion or an appreciation with a line of argument, a clear structure and a conclusion.
• Own-response question: asks what the poem makes you think or feel. Answer honestly, but always tie your response to a stanza or an image.

3. A method for every question: read, plan, answer, check

• Read the command word first. State and name ask for a fact. Describe asks what something is like. Explain asks for reasons and effects. Discuss asks you to weigh more than one view. Evaluate asks for a judgement with reasons. To what extent do you agree asks you to take a position and defend it.
• Plan in a few lines: two or three points, each with a stanza reference and a described feature.
• Answer in point, evidence and effect. Make the point, show where it happens, and say what it achieves.
• Check that you answered the command word, stayed on the poem, mentioned the shift of attitude where relevant, and gave reasons.

4. Question bank A: short answers

Try each question in your head, then compare your answer with the model points.

• A1. On what occasion is the poem set, and what is the weather like? It is set on the Saturday of the Whitsun weekend, a holiday popular for weddings, on a hot, sunlit afternoon.
• A2. Where does the journey begin and end? The speaker travels by train from Hull to London.
• A3. How does the speaker's behaviour change when the train begins to stop at stations? At first he hardly notices the noise on the platforms. Soon afterwards he looks out properly and watches the wedding parties with growing attention. That change is the poem's turning point.
• A4. Name two kinds of people the speaker sees and say how he presents them. He sees the wedding families, such as loud older relatives in their best clothes, and the young women in showy fashion, and he presents them in comic, slightly superior detail. He also sees the newly married couples who board.
• A5. How does the train change during the journey? It begins mostly empty and fills with newly married couples as they join at station after station.
• A6. What do the couples share in stanza 7, and what do they not realise? They share the same train and the same stretch of time. Each couple is absorbed in itself and unaware of the others, although the poem observes that all their lives will contain this shared hour.
• A7. What is the closing image and what does it suggest? A feeling of coming down is compared to a volley of arrows that vanishes from view and lands as rain. It suggests release, fertility and renewal, and also risk, since arrows cannot be called back and the future stays unseen.
• A8. Give the form of the poem. Eight ten-line stanzas, rhymed ababcdecde, in mostly iambic pentameter with a short second line in each stanza.

5. Question bank B: stanza-focused questions

For each, read the stanza or stanzas named in your textbook before you answer.

• B1. Stanzas 1 and 2 (lines 1–20). (a) Name two senses to which the details appeal. (b) Describe the speaker's tone. (c) Why might the poet begin with such plain, physical detail? Model points: (a) touch, through the heat, and sight and smell, through the glare, the landscape and the odours of the journey. (b) Relaxed, offhand and mildly ironic. (c) The plain detail makes the journey believable and sets a low baseline of feeling, so the later sympathy and the closing image are strongly felt.
• B2. Stanzas 3 and 4 (lines 21–40). (a) What begins to catch the speaker's attention? (b) How does the poet make the platform scenes lively? (c) Is the speaker's attitude wholly kind? Model points: (a) the noise and bustle of the wedding parties. (b) Through crowded, comic detail of loud relatives, jokes and bright clothes. (c) No. There is a streak of superiority, a mild condescension, which later softens.
• B3. Stanzas 5 and 6 (lines 41–60). (a) How does the speaker's focus change from the earlier stanzas? (b) What feelings are suggested for the couples? Model points: (a) from the families to the couples and what the occasion means for them, as the weddings repeat and the train fills. (b) nervousness, awkwardness, solemnity and the sense of one life ending and another beginning.
• B4. Stanza 7 (lines 61–70). (a) What do the couples share, and what do they not know? (b) What mood does this create? Model points: (a) the same journey and the same hour, unaware of one another. (b) a hushed, thoughtful and tender mood, with wonder at the shared moment.
• B5. Stanza 8 (lines 71–80). (a) What is happening in the setting? (b) Explain the closing image. (c) Describe the final mood. Model points: (a) the train is nearing London and slowing. (b) a feeling of coming down is compared to a volley of arrows that vanishes from view and lands as rain, suggesting release, fertility and renewal with an edge of risk. (c) release, wonder and guarded hope.

6. Question bank C: long answers with outlines

• C1. Describe how the speaker's attitude changes in the course of the poem. Outline: open with the overall shift from detachment to sympathy; the offhand, faintly ironic traveller of stanzas 1–2; the amused and slightly superior observer of stanzas 3–4; the sympathetic witness of stanzas 5–7; the lyrical, guarded hope of stanza 8; the cause of the change, which is growing attention to the couples; and a closing comment on why the change is convincing.
• C2. Discuss the importance of the train journey in the poem. Outline: the journey gives the poem its frame and its time order; the stops give it stages; the train gathers strangers into one place; it begins mostly empty and ends full; the movement of the train matches the movement of feeling; it becomes a picture of a shared human passage; and the slowing at the end leads into the closing image.
• C3. How does Larkin use imagery to convey the poem's themes? Outline: the weather arc from sunlit heat to rain; the comic social images of the platforms; the plain, physical detail of the early stanzas as a base; the closing simile of arrows and rain; and the link from these images to marriage as ritual, renewal and an uncertain future.
• C4. ‘The poem is as much about the observer as about the weddings.’ Discuss. Outline: for the claim, the speaker's change of attitude shapes the poem's structure and its tone, and the poem stays with his perceptions; against it, the weddings supply the social detail, the shared hour and the closing image; conclusion, the weddings are the occasion that changes the observer, so the meaning comes from both.
• C5. Write a critical appreciation of the poem. Outline: a claim about what the poem does; subject and theme; form and structure; imagery and language; tone; evaluation of strengths and limits; a conclusion that returns to the claim.

7. The commonest mistakes

• Retelling the story when the question asks you to explain or evaluate.
• Mixing up tone and mood, or giving one label for the whole poem.
• Forgetting the shift of attitude, which is the poem's main movement.
• Naming a device without saying what it does.
• Quoting from memory and getting the words wrong. It is better to give the stanza number and describe the image precisely than to misquote.
• Putting in long stretches of biography that do not help the answer.
• Writing vague praise, such as nice or beautiful, with no reason.

8. A five-day revision routine

• Day 1: read the poem aloud twice, mark where the tone shifts, and write the sixty-second sheet from memory.
• Day 2: answer four short questions from bank A under timed conditions, three minutes each.
• Day 3: work through the stanza-focused questions in bank B, reading each stanza before you answer.
• Day 4: write one long answer from bank C in about twenty minutes, using a plan.
• Day 5: mark your answers with the checklist of command word, evidence, effect, shift and conclusion, and revise the points where you lost marks.

Check the marks and word limits of your own paper, and adjust the lengths of your answers to match.