High Windows

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1974

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Happiness

From the first stanza, Larkin’s poem is positioned as the reflections of a person assuming that those who have what he does not are happy. While the speaker is not quite portrayed as envious, the certainty with which he “know[s] this is paradise” (Line 4) invites critique. For the speaker, the absence of the old “Bonds and gestures” (Line 6) of sexual repression mean that the new generation will all proceed “To happiness, endlessly” (Line 9). The poem’s speaker never outright expresses regret at having to live a life with these “Bonds” (Line 6) in place, nor does he identify his life as either happy or unhappy. However, the implication is that he hopes—no, “know[s]” (Line 4)—that the new generation will achieve the happiness his generation could not.

Rather than demonstrate its criticism of this point of view by having the speaker become disillusioned, the poem simply gives another example that reveals the problems with the speaker’s grass-is-greener thinking. The speaker imagines himself as a young man being observed by a member of the older generation. His imagined elder assumes the same thing he does of the new generation: that the new social freedoms will lead to widespread generational happiness. The imagined elder envies the young speaker for his freedom from belief in God and “hell and that” (Line 13), assuming that the new generation will all “go down the long slide / Like free bloody birds” (Lines 15-16). But the reader already knows that the speaker and his generation did not experience this unrelenting freedom and happiness—after all, if he had, then he would not be identifying the new generation at finally arriving at the “paradise // Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives” (Lines 4-5).

Widespread, sustained happiness is not simply one new social freedom away, the poem claims. In fact, the difficulty and complexity of life are simply part of what it is to be human—just as is assuming the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. When the speaker’s surface-level musings are interrupted by “the thought of high windows” (Line 17), he partially understands the scope of existence, the “endless” (Line 20) expanse of each generation longing for change, one after the other. The quest for happiness is a small one, bound to the finite lives of the people living, but the breadth of human experience has a serene, “deep blue” (Line 19) beauty to it that seems, to Larkin, answer enough.

Sex

While the poem expands its initial focus on the sexual revolution to social and moral changes in general, sex still plays an important thematic role in “High Windows.” While the social changes that led to religious freedoms (or, in this case, freedom from religion) are subtly critiqued by the speaker’s sudden “thought of high windows” (Line 17), there does not appear to be a comparable counterpoint to sexual freedoms. In fact, after the initial observation in the first stanza, the poem never again alludes to sex (except, perhaps, as a double meaning in the enjambed phrase “sweating in the dark” [Line 12]).

The poem’s use of tone does, however, suggest its relationship to sex. Before the reader encounters any poetic language, imagery, or distinct literary devices of any kind, they encounter the surprisingly casual descriptions of sex in the poem’s first stanza. The speaker describes the couple as “fucking” (Line 2), and then immediately provides a brief list of birth control in nearly clinical fashion: “Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm” (Line 3). That this leads without preamble to the speaker “know[ing] this is paradise” (Line 4) is humorous. The contrast between the matter-of-fact statement of such extreme praise—especially stated as it is in religious/mythic language (“paradise” rather than “utopia,” for instance) (Line 3)—is a funny one. Larkin doubles down on this humorous contrast by comparing sexual mores to an “outdated combine harvester” (Line 7)—an unwieldly simile bordering on the absurd.

While the poem certainly communicates praise for these new sexual freedoms—as well as wistfulness and longing on the part of the older speaker for such freedoms in his own youth—it also critiques a celebratory attitude through its use of humor. As the poem conveys (with the imagined elder and the final, complicating image), it is absurd to treat any one cultural shift as the “final” answer that will result in the perfect happiness “Everyone […] has dreamed of all their lives” (Line 5). Larkin’s humor pokes fun at this attitude when it comes to sex in particular, demonstrating the silliness inherent in directly connecting such a basic, physical process with utopian existential actualization.

Freedom & Human Nature

In some respects, “High Windows” is a poem about the unchanging human tendency to continually try and continually fail to achieve utopia. The poem presents various freedoms achieved by new generations that seemed the only barrier to this utopia of pure happiness to those by which they were bound: first “God […] // hell and that” (Lines 12-13), and now free love and easily obtainable contraception. These customs bound the generations unliberated from them, and functioned as fences beyond which the grass seemed greener. The poem doesn’t dispute whether these new freedoms are mistakes or triumphs. Instead, it simply acknowledges that the individual’s quest for happiness seems largely unaffected by generational freedoms.

Although the speaker does not outright acknowledge this in his rhetorical thoughts, the poem’s final image comes unasked and expresses the “endless” (Line 20), unchanging “deep blue air” (Line 19) beyond any specific social change. It is notable that this thought comes in the form of an image from church, the “bond[ ] and gesture” supposedly “pushed to one side” (Line 6) by the speaker's generation. Even when these customs are supposedly denied, they persist like an image bubbling up unbidden. In this way, the freedoms provided by technological advances (like the “pills or […] diaphragm[s],” or the “combine harvester” [Lines 3, 7] to which they are compared) or social change do not necessarily free the individual from ingrained ideological bonds.