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Church Going 1

The document discusses the poem "Church Going" by Philip Larkin. It was written in 1954 when church attendance in England was declining. The title "Church Going" has two meanings - regular visits to church, and the potential decline of the institution due to lack of faith. The poem describes the speaker entering an empty church and contemplating what will happen to churches in the future. It explores both the traditional religious role of churches and the speaker's personal relationship with the church building.

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691 views2 pages

Church Going 1

The document discusses the poem "Church Going" by Philip Larkin. It was written in 1954 when church attendance in England was declining. The title "Church Going" has two meanings - regular visits to church, and the potential decline of the institution due to lack of faith. The poem describes the speaker entering an empty church and contemplating what will happen to churches in the future. It explores both the traditional religious role of churches and the speaker's personal relationship with the church building.

Uploaded by

Kabra
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Significance of title “Church Going”!

The poem “Church Going” is one of the best Philip Larkin’s poems. The poem was written
in 1954 and reveals the social context of the time when it was written. There was a general
decline in the attendance in churches which begun to took place in 1945.
Philip Larkin wrote this poem after World War 2, when he observed people’s lesser dependence
on church. This leads us to the two possible meanings of the title “Church Going”. 1st meaning is
the regular or often visit to the church, and the second meaning is the decline of the institution
because of people’s lack of faith in God or Religion.
It is often said that the poet himself was agnostic and the speaker in the poem could be the poet
himself or a persona adopted by him.
The poem talks about the speaker’s thoughts as he enters a vast, empty church and wonders what
will happen when the churches fall into disuse. At a deeper level the poem becomes an inquiry
into the role of religion in our lives today.
As the speaker enters the church, he witnesses the dull condition of the church and notices that
there are no visitors there. This silence tenses him. He reads a few verses from the Bible, signs
the visitor’s book and donates an Irish six pence. It seems to him that it was not worthwhile for
him to come to the church. Still, the speaker couldn’t avoid the church.
According to the speaker, a time is coming when people would stop going to churches
altogether, because they would have lost their faith in God and in divine worship. Eventually,
however, some people might still visit the decayed and disused church buildings on account of
some inner compulsion or to derive some wisdom from the sight of the many graves in the
churchyard.
Finally, the speaker realizes that “the church is a serious house on a serious earth”. It’s a symbol
of man’s sincere search for the ultimate meaning of life since science and technology can’t solve
his spiritual needs. That’s why the speaker himself comes to the church again and again when
he’s tired of worldly problems. In this sense, we can say this is a religious poem. Thus, the first
meaning of the title is affirmed.
This double meaning of “church going” helps to highlight the tension this poem explores
between traditional religious meaning and the speaker’s personal relationship to the church. The
poem underlines the truth that the power and the glory of God cannot be destroyed by the
advancement of science and technology. On the other hand the church will continue to be the
centre focusing universal love and peace and giving spiritual solace to man’s problems and
sufferings in his life.

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