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CITY POSTGRADUATE COLLEGE FOR WOMEN JHELUM

2."Ambulances"
Introduction
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 thespectators 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.”
Critical Appreciation
A Pessimistic Poem About Illness and Death
The main idea in this poem is that an ambulance signifies illness, and that
it fills the spectators with the thought of death. The spectators perceive
their own lives coming to an end when they see a seriously ailing man being
taken to a hospital by an ambulance. The approach of death, says the poet,
would mean an end to a life of activity which includes
family relationships and fashions. But, when death comes, this “unique
random blend of families and fashions” would come to an end, thus
depriving life of all its meaning. Here then is another poem about death by
Larkin who had felt obsessed with the fact and the reality of death
throughout his life. This, again, is a pessimistic poem with an atmosphere
of pathos and melancholy hovering over it.

Vivid and Realistic Imagery


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.
A Depressing Poem
This poem is a really depressing one. The very title suggests something
saddening. The sight of an ambulance has an immediate effect on
the spectators who would at once think of somebody dying. An ambulance
may remove a sick man, who has been injured seriously in a road accident,
to a hospital. But an ambulance always symbolizes illness, disease, a road
accident, and possibly death. The sight of an ambulance is by no means a
cheering one.

CRITICAL COMMENTS
One of the critics says that the poem Ambulances conveys the idea that
every imaginable pain in life is as nothing compared to the permanent and
true fact of death. This poem is, in its totality, a celebration of the values of
consciousness. Even the greatest drama of life—“the unique random blend
of families and fashions”—cannotcontinue for ever. All streets in time are
visited by ambulances, and all people are eventually carried and stowed
inside those ambulances. The same critic says that Ambulances, like all
Larkin’s best poems, modestly and devoutly collects evidence of ordinary
life to create a truth which can be universally acknowledged.
Another critic points out that Larkin wrote a group of poems which insist
harshly on fear in the face of death, and which are therefore bleak and
sinister. In some of these poems, Larkin’s view of death is chilling and
effective because of the very ordinariness and everyday settings he writes
about. For instance, in the poem Ambulances, he emphasizes the
omnipresence of death in the line: “All streets in time are visited.” His
poem Aubade proves that nothing can defeat or mitigate the horror and
permanence of death.
According to another critic , 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.” This
poem is able to arrive at that comprehensive realism only by concentrating
simultaneously on the particularity of the lives in question, namely the lives
of the children on steps or on the road, and of the women “coming from the
shops, past smells of different dinners.” The reference to smells of different
dinners leads unexpectedly to a moment of heightened intensity, while its
seemingly mundane quality strengthens the sense of common destiny
which follows in the line: “so permanent and blank and true.” The phrase
“solving emptiness” a little before this line functions enigmatically and
ambiguously since the word “solving” can be interpreted as both resolving
and dissolving. The poem seems to speak with timeless and universal
wisdom, and yet its ideas are those of a very distinctive agnostic
consciousness. Larkin’s support to late twentieth-century agnosticism is
evident not just in the poem’s residual religious vocabulary (“Closed like
confessions” or “Poor soul, they whisper....”) but also in the conviction that
individual lives are both “random” and “unique”. What gives that individual
life a claim upon the reader’s attention is “what cohered in it across/The
years.” In the absence of a more sustaining and unifying belief, the speakers
in Larkin’s poems resort to the secular principle of coherence. This notion
of coherence, however, is not only a pseudo-religious principle; it is also an
idea which is central to English political liberalism and to the underlying
aspirations of post-war consensus. (It is this search for coherence that gives
scope and momentum to what many commentators regard as Larkin’s
finest poem. The Whitsun Weddings).

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