Philip Larkin: A Shift Away from Individualism to Socialism

Philip Larkin in his two poems ‘Church Going’ and ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ moves away from doubt to certainty as regards the function of the two social institutions of church and marriage. This is a shift away from doubt in the functionality of these two institutions to certainty of their functionality and usefulness for society. These poems are the poems of thought in which he starts off by looking doubtfully at church and marriage so much so that when one reads the poems one thinks that Larkin is a disbeliever but gradually Larkin confirms church and marriage as great institutions. The shift in pronoun from ‘I’ to ‘we’ and ‘my’ to ‘our’ at the end of these two poems endorses his shift from individualism to socialism and makes the poems humanist poems.