Ambulances

1. Ambulances Philip Larkin

2. Stanza One • The first stanza describes ambulances threading their way through a busy city. • The ambulances are ‘Light glossy grey’ in colour and the badge of the ambulance is painted on them. • The ambulances attract a lot of attention as they pass through the streets.

3. Stanza One • People can’t help gazing at them, yet it is impossible to see into the ambulances because their windows are made of unreflective glass. • Nowhere is safe from illness and death. An ambulance can be called to any street at any time to deal with asick or dying person. • ‘They come to rest at any kerb:/All streets in time are visited’.

4. Stanza Two • The poet imagines an ambulance collecting a patient. • He imagines the patient’s face as ‘wild’ and ‘white’ with sickness when he is placed in the back of the ambulance. • He describes women and children as fascinated by the sight of the patient being carried away.

5. Stanza Two • The smells of cooking come from the surrounding houses, bringing tomind normal, everyday existence. • The patient has been torn from this world of everyday routine and placed in the terrifying space of the ambulance, a place from which he may never return.

6. Stanza Two • When the onlookers see the patient they realise that death is always present, that it lurks under everyday life. • It ‘lies under all we do’. • For a split second they fully realise that they themselves are going to die and are horrified.

7. Stanza Two • The onlookers pity the patient and themselves, for they realise that one day they will face the ‘solving emptiness’ of death. • The poet suggests that there is no life after death. Death is an emptiness that leaves us as nothing, a ‘permanent’, endless blankness.

8. Stanza Three and Four • The poet imagines someone dying in the back of the ambulance. • The person’s life is nearly over and in death the person will lose everything. • The poet says that our different experiences come together to make us who we are. • However as the person lies dying in the ambulance, the tapestry of his life begins to ‘loosen’.

9. Stanza Three and Four • When we witness an ambulance race through parting traffic, we are filled with bleak thoughts. • Our deaths seem very real and very close. • For a moment, the stuff of everyday life appears dull and unimportant. • Our lives, ‘all we are’ seems nothing more than a journey towards death.

10. What is this poem about? Death The poem makes a number of points about the nature of death: • Death is everywhere. Death, like ambulances, will eventually come to every street and every house. • Death can strike very suddenly. One moment you are living your life, the next you are dying in an ambulance.

11. What is this poem about? Death • The poem suggests that there is no life after death. Death is an emptiness that will dissolve all that we are. • Death is something people don’t usually like to think about but are confronted with it when they see an ambulance.

12. What is this poem about? Ambulances The poem offers a very grim view of ambulances. They are not seen as life-saving but as something menacing. • The ambulances appears sinister with their grey colouring and shaded windows. • They are seen as messengers of death, coming to rest at any kerb.

13. What is this poem about? Ambulances • The ambulances are frightening closed-off spaces: ‘Closed like confessionals’. • When a sick person lies inside one, he is cut off from everything he knows and loves and is trapped.

14. Questions • What view of death is described in this poem? • Would you agree that this is a bleak and depressing poem? Why or why not? • Do you think this poem presents a realistic portrayal of ambulances? Does it fit with your impression of ambulances?