A meditation on the closeness of death, its randomness and its inevitability. These three ideas are captured for Larkin in the action of ambulances in the city. Today young people might see ambulances as a sign of hope, a positive intervention sustaining life rather than heralding death. When the poem was written in the
fifties, to be carried away in an ambulance was a sign of worse to come. Ambulances is, in its totality, a celebration of the values of consciousness. It modestly and devoutly collects evidence of ordinary life to create a truth which can be universally acknowledged. The poem is a depressing one. The very title suggests something saddening. Ambulances drive through a city street, and stop to pick up a critically sick man and take him to a hospital.
Everybody looks at an ambulance when it is driving through the streets, though an ambulance does not look back at anybody. The sick man has been taken away to a hospital and the sense of loss which the spectators might have experienced would then abruptly come to an end. The man, who has been carried to the hospital by the ambulance, had led a meaningful life which was a mixture of family relationships and an observance of the fashions of the time. But that life has now come to an end and has, in fact, lost all its meaning.
The main idea in this poem is that an ambulance signifies illness, and that it fills the spectators with the thought of death. The first two stanzas of the poem contain vivid and realistic imagery of the ambulances threading their way through the streets of a city possibly at noon-time when there are many loud noises coming from the traffic and from the crowds of people. When an ambulance comes to a stop, women coming from the shops look at the wild white face of the sick man who is being taken away to a hospital. The remaining three stanzas of this poem contain the poet’s reflections and meditations on the sad fate which awaits all of us. The entire life of an individual loses its meaning in the face of his approaching death. What gives to the poem Ambulances its impressive authority is its relentless insistence that “all streets in time are visited,” and its closing assertion that to be taken away by an ambulance “brings closer what is left to come, /And dulls to distance all we are.”
Everybody looks at an ambulance when it is driving through the streets, though an ambulance does not look back at anybody. The sick man has been taken away to a hospital and the sense of loss which the spectators might have experienced would then abruptly come to an end. The man, who has been carried to the hospital by the ambulance, had led a meaningful life which was a mixture of family relationships and an observance of the fashions of the time. But that life has now come to an end and has, in fact, lost all its meaning.
The main idea in this poem is that an ambulance signifies illness, and that it fills the spectators with the thought of death. The first two stanzas of the poem contain vivid and realistic imagery of the ambulances threading their way through the streets of a city possibly at noon-time when there are many loud noises coming from the traffic and from the crowds of people. When an ambulance comes to a stop, women coming from the shops look at the wild white face of the sick man who is being taken away to a hospital. The remaining three stanzas of this poem contain the poet’s reflections and meditations on the sad fate which awaits all of us. The entire life of an individual loses its meaning in the face of his approaching death. What gives to the poem Ambulances its impressive authority is its relentless insistence that “all streets in time are visited,” and its closing assertion that to be taken away by an ambulance “brings closer what is left to come, /And dulls to distance all we are.”
The first two stanzas of this poem contain vivid and realistic imagery of the ambulances threading their way through the streets of a city possibly at noon-time when there are many loud noises coming from the traffic and from the crowds of people. When an ambulance comes to a stop, women coming from the shops look at the wild white face of the sick man who is being taken away to a hospital. There is a realistic detail about the women coming from the shops, “past smells of different dinners,” meaning that these women have passed several food-shops which were emitting odours of different kinds. The remaining three stanzas of this poem contain the poet’s reflections and meditations on the sad fate which awaits all of us. The entire life of an individual loses its meaning in the face of his approaching death. There is a vivid picture also in the line: “The traffic parts to let go by”. When an ambulance is driving through a street, the people move quickly to one side or the other in order to make way for the ambulance.
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