The Full Text of “Afternoons”
The Full Text of “Afternoons”
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“Afternoons” Introduction
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"Afternoons" appears in Philip Larkin's collection The Whitsun Weddings (1964). The poem presents a melancholy portrait of families at a playground, centered on "Young mothers" who have transitioned from their romantic younger years into a life of parenting and adult responsibility. As they watch their kids playing, the moms feel (according to the speaker) that "Something is pushing them / To the side of their own lives." The poem invites readers to question whether family life, and raising children in particular, demands more sacrifice than it's worth.
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“Afternoons” Summary
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Summertime is ending. Autumn leaves fall, one by one or two by two, from trees around the new playground. During gaps of free time in the afternoons, young moms gather by the swing set and sandbox, letting their kids run free.
At various points behind them stand their husbands who work as tradesmen, a housing complex full of laundry to be done, and their wedding albums (titled Our Wedding), placed near TV sets. Ahead of them, the wind is damaging the places where they used to go on dates.
Young lovers still go on dates there, but they're all currently in school. The moms' kids, who are determined to gather more green acorns, expect their moms to bring them home. The moms' youthful beauty has lost its shape. Some force seems to be driving them to the margins of their own existence.
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“Afternoons” Themes
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Motherhood, Maturity, and Sacrifice
"Afternoons" describes a series of autumn afternoons on the playground of a housing estate. It focuses especially on the "Young mothers" who watch their kids play, while their husbands linger behind them and laundry waits back inside. Having left behind the romance and independence of their youth, these mothers now face years of marriage, childrearing, and adult responsibility. As if mourning this transition from youth to maturity, the speaker comments that "Something is pushing them / To the side of their own lives." The poem implies that settling down into a conventional family life is a mixed blessing at best, especially for women: though it's part of a natural generational cycle, it forces them to sacrifice their youth, selfhood, and freedom for the needs of others.
The speaker portrays the "Young mothers" as past their prime. Their "beauty has thickened," the speaker says, harshly implying that their good looks, like the summer itself, “is fading.” Meanwhile, the "wind / Is ruining" their old "courting-places" (the places they used to go on dates). Their wedding albums are stored somewhere "Near the television," an image that captures how the excitement of young love has given way to mundane domestic drudgery. The poem thus links growing up and settling down with the loss of passion and romance.
Now, the mothers' lives revolve around taking care of their families. These women "Set[] free their children" on the playground, but they aren't free themselves. Rather than enjoying their own "recreation," they have to watch their kids, who "Expect to be taken home" afterward. And there, "An estateful of washing" waits; that is, their housing complex is full of laundry they'll be expected to do.
Clearly, the mothers must devote their time and energy to fulfilling others' needs and expectations. They're no longer able to enjoy beautiful "Afternoons" for their own sake. "Something is pushing them / To the side of their own lives,” the speaker continues, implying that the women haven't simply sacrificed the thrills of youth but their very independent existence.
Though jarring, the poem also treats this sacrifice as part of a somewhat inevitable cycle. The "courting places" the women used to go to still exist, the speaker says, but they now belong to the next generation (still young enough that they're "all in school"). One generation's "court[ship]" soon yields to the next. Similarly, the women’s children search for "unripe acorns" that seem to symbolize the new generations to come, which will take root and grow up as naturally as trees. And one day, these generations will also experience the painful loss of youth that the poem treats as part of settling down.
Ultimately, then, the poem expresses deep ambivalence, if not skepticism, about traditional family life. While implying that the women's transition into motherhood is, in part, a natural part of the circle of life, the speaker clearly doubts whether it's worth the sacrifice it requires.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-24
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Afternoons”
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Lines 1-4
Summer is fading: ...
... new recreation ground.Lines 1-4 establish the poem's setting: a freshly built playground, or "new recreation ground." The time of year is early autumn, as "Summer is fading" (line 1) and "leaves" are "fall[ing]"—not thickly, just "in ones and twos"—from surrounding "trees" (lines 2-3).
Along with the title, "Afternoons," the autumn imagery is symbolic. Afternoon is when the sun is past its high point; autumn is when the year is past its midpoint and its warmest season. Accordingly, afternoon and autumn are often used to represent other kinds of decline, such as the decline of youth, strength, or beauty. Note, too, how the speaker says the line "Summer is fading" rather than "Summer is ending." This might evoke other common kinds of fading (the fading of energy or memory, for example).
Put all this together, and the poem seems to be establishing a mood of wistfulness, melancholy, or nostalgia. Though it's set on a brand-new playground, it seems a bit somber and concerned with the passage of time.
The lack of a rhyme scheme or meter establishes that the poem is written in free verse. The enjambments at the ends of lines 2 and 3 make the lines seem to tumble down the page with little punctuation to slow their fall:
The leaves fall in ones and twos
From trees bordering
The new recreation ground.This effect subtly mirrors the falling of the leaves. The repetitions of consonance and assonance (the /f/ sounds in "fading," "fall," and "From"; the /-ing/ suffix of "fading" and "bordering"; the /ee/ vowel in "trees" and "leaves") also echo the repetitive leaf-fall, giving this first stanza a hushed, gentle music.
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Lines 5-8
In the hollows ...
... free their children. -
Lines 9-14
Behind them, at ...
... Near the television: -
Lines 15-18
Before them, the ...
... all in school), -
Lines 19-24
And their children, ...
... their own lives.
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“Afternoons” Symbols
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Daily and Seasonal Cycles
The poem takes place during a series of "Afternoons" when "Summer is fading." Because the sun is highest in the sky at noon, and temperatures are warmest in the summertime, noon and summer often symbolize other kinds of "high points," including the prime of life. Symbolically, then, the poem deals with the "fading" of youth and the onset of mature adulthood.
In the first stanza, for example, the "Young mothers assemble" just after the image of falling autumn "leaves." Through this introduction, the poem subtly links the mothers with the end of summer and the start of fall, hinting that the prime of their lives is passing along with the season of growth.
By contrast, the final stanza shows their children hunting for "unripe acorns," or green acorns that have fallen early from the oak trees. In this way, the poem links the kids with the seeds of future growth. Even the early autumn "wind," which is "ruining" the parents' former "courting-places," seems to signal that a season of age and decline is replacing an earlier season of youth, romance, and possibility. (But only for the parents: for the young lovers, the courting-places "are still courting-places"!)
Broadly, all this symbolism suggests that human generational cycles keep turning just as daily and seasonal cycles do. They're inevitable and unstoppable, even if they give us the uneasy feeling that life is moving on without us.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-5: “Summer is fading: / The leaves fall in ones and twos / From trees bordering / The new recreation ground. / In the hollows of afternoons”
- Lines 15-16: “Before them, the wind / Is ruining their courting-places”
- Lines 19-20: “And their children, so intent on / Finding more unripe acorns,”
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“Afternoons” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Metaphor
The poem uses several metaphors to convey the mood and experience of its characters, particularly the "Young mothers" who don't feel so young anymore.
First, in line 1, the speaker announces that "Summer is fading." This is a bit more figurative than a phrase like "Summer is ending"; seasons don't literally fade away. This choice of words subtly evokes other kinds of fading, both literal and metaphorical: for example, the fading of youth and "beauty" (see line 22), or the fading of analog films and photos with the passage of time. In short, the word "fading" helps establish a wistful, nostalgic atmosphere.
The same stanza describes young moms and their kids gathering at the playground "In the hollows of afternoons." This metaphor suggests that they head outside during gaps ("hollows" or empty spaces) in their afternoon schedules. But the word "hollows" might also have an emotional layer, suggesting that these mothers feel empty in the afternoons—as if something's missing from their lives.
Indeed, the poem ends up exploring their sense of wistful unease. The poem's final metaphor captures exactly that feeling:
Something is pushing them
To the side of their own lives.That is, they've sacrificed so much for their families that they no longer feel like the central characters in their own stories. They may also feel "push[ed] [...] To the side" by time and nature, as younger generations—including the "lovers [...] in school" and their own small "children"—grow up and take over the world. But, of course, nothing's literally pushing them; the sidelining is entirely figurative.
Where metaphor appears in the poem:- Line 1: “Summer is fading:”
- Line 5: “In the hollows of afternoons”
- Lines 23-24: “Something is pushing them / To the side of their own lives.”
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Repetition
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Consonance
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Enjambment
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"Afternoons" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Recreation ground
- Hollows
- Sandpit
- Intervals
- Skilled trades
- Estateful
- Albums
- Courting-places
- Unripe acorns
- Thickened
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(Location in poem: Line 4: “The new recreation ground.”)
Playground.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Afternoons”
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Form
"Afternoons" consists of three eight-line stanzas, or octaves:
- The first stanza sets the basic scene (a playground) and introduces the "mothers" and "children."
- The second stanza (as well as the beginning of the third) zooms out to provide a wider picture of the community.
- The third stanza re-focuses on the children and, finally, the moms, who feel less and less like the center of "their own lives" (line 24).
In a way, then, the poem's structure helps illustrate what the moms are feeling. Though they're ostensibly the main characters here, the poem presents them as part of a larger surrounding context—a community and generational cycle—that threatens to draw focus away from them.
The poem is written in free verse, meaning that it contains no meter or rhyme scheme. Philip Larkin rarely wrote in free verse, so the lack of traditional formal elements here is worth noting. On the one hand, the poem is divided into equal-sized stanzas and lines of roughly even length (five to nine syllables apiece). On the other hand, it never falls into a consistent rhythm. These features help evoke the poem's underlying tension between freedom and limitation—namely, the "free[dom]" of the children at play (line 8) and the limitations of the moms who've made their kids the focus of their lives.
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Meter
"Afternoons" is written in free verse, so it has no meter. The line lengths are fairly consistent, ranging from five syllables (e.g., line 1) to nine syllables (line 16), but they don't follow a regular rhythm.
Avoiding meter is an unusual choice for Larkin, who was known as a master of metrical poetry. Nearly all of the poems in The Whitsun Weddings (1964), the collection in which "Afternoons" appears, use both meter and rhyme. Here, the combination of free verse and roughly even line lengths helps dramatize the poem's themes of freedom and limitation, embodied by the seemingly "free" children (line 8) and the settled, routine-bound mothers.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Afternoons" doesn't have a rhyme scheme, as it's written in free verse. Again, free verse is an unusual choice for Larkin, who favored tightly controlled meter and rhyme.
There is one identical rhyme here: the repetition of "courting-places" at the ends of lines 16 and 17. This repetition helps bridge the second and third stanzas (which are further linked through enjambment). It's also a repetition with an important variation: in line 16, these are "their courting-places" (i.e., the mothers'), but in line 17, the courting-places belong to younger, still-unmarried people. Through this shift in context, the identical rhyme helps illustrate the ongoing generational cycle.
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“Afternoons” Speaker
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"Afternoons" is narrated in the third person by a seemingly detached, objective speaker. In effect, the speaker has an omniscient perspective on the poem's scene. In addition to seeing all the "Young mothers," "husbands," and "children" at the playground, the speaker is aware of the "washing" that awaits the mothers at home, the "trades" their husbands work in, and even the "albums" and "television[s]" in their living rooms.
These kinds of details are novelistic, offering a quickly sketched but intimate portrait of a community. (Or, more broadly, of the 1950s British middle class.) Of course, it's possible that the speaker is just a passing, ordinary observer who infers or imagines these details. But because there's no first-person commentary, the poem creates the impression of a God's-eye view.
However, that doesn't mean the speaker is completely neutral and "objective." The line "Their beauty has thickened," for example, passes a value judgement, seemingly from the perspective of someone who's more attracted to certain female body types than others. Some critics have called this line misogynistic, or at least a reflection of Larkin's biases as a male poet. Certainly the attitude of the poem as a whole—with its skepticism about traditional domestic life—reflects attitudes found elsewhere in Larkin's poems and letters. (See the Context section of this guide for more.)
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“Afternoons” Setting
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The poem takes place on a "new recreation ground," or playground, located near a council estate or British public housing complex. (The word "estateful" in line 11 refers to a complex of this kind.) The playground, which may have been built specifically for families in the complex, contains a "swing and sandpit" where children play in the "afternoons."
As described by the speaker, the families are representative of the post-WWII British middle class. They're so-called nuclear family units, consisting of husband, wife, and kids. The mothers are "Young" (couples generally married and had children younger in that era); the husbands work in "skilled trades" requiring manual or technical labor (e.g., mechanics, electricians, and the like). Their homes contain "television[s]"—increasingly common but hardly universal in the UK of 1959—and wedding photo "albums," tokens of middle-class life during the period. Overall, the community seems solidly prosperous, though not glamorous. The way the adults' former "courting-places" are reused by young lovers suggests that some families have stayed here for multiple generations.
Those courting-places (dating/makeout spots) may be lovers' lanes or tree-shaded areas whose leaves "the wind / Is ruining." They're located somewhere ahead of ("Before") the mothers watching their children, whereas the council estate is "Behind them." The playground is surrounded by "trees," including oaks, which are dropping "leaves" and "unripe acorns"—a sign that "Summer is fading" and autumn beginning. And since the poem is set over a series of "Afternoons," not just one, this is a scene that repeats itself.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Afternoons”
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Literary Context
From the publication of his second collection, The Less Deceived, in 1955 until his death in 1985, Philip Larkin was one of the UK's most popular poets. The editor-critic J. D. Scott grouped Larkin, along with a number of other post-World War II English writers (including Larkin's close friend Kingsley Amis), into a school he called "The Movement." The Movement poets rejected many of the formal and stylistic experiments of the previous, Modernist generation. They gravitated toward a plainer style along with characteristically English settings and themes.
Larkin wrote "Afternoons" in 1959 and published it in his 1964 collection The Whitsun Weddings. Like several other well-known poems from that collection—including "Dockery and Son," "Sunny Prestatyn," and the title poem—it captures a slice of post-WWII English life, finding ominous or unsettling overtones in ordinary situations. For example, both "Afternoons" and "Dockery and Son" explore the decision to have or not have children, as well as the way people's lives often seem dictated by forces beyond their control. In the one poem, "Something is pushing" young mothers "To the side of their own lives" (lines 23-24); in the other, the speaker describes:
[...] a style
Our lives bring with them: habit for a while,
Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got
And how we got it [...]These poems' general attitude is one of blunt realism bordering on bleak cynicism (though some, such as "An Arundel Tomb," contain redemptive notes as well). This attitude became strongly associated with Larkin, who once claimed that "Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for [William] Wordsworth." In other words, the kind of melancholy found in "Afternoons" runs throughout his poetry. A lifelong bachelor, he was also famously skeptical of marriage and child-rearing; his best-known poem, "This Be the Verse," urges readers not to "have any kids yourself."
Historical Context
Larkin's poetry is strongly associated with the culture and atmosphere of mid-20th-century Britain. "Afternoons" is no exception. Its reference to "An estateful of washing" (line 11) suggests that the families in the poem live in a council estate: a type of public housing complex common in Britain from the 1920s onward.
Britain narrowly avoided bankruptcy after World War II (1939-1945) and was slow to recover economically. Prosperity returned to the country during the 1950s, however, and Larkin wrote "Afternoons" at the end of that decade. These boom years brought a nationwide increase in home ownership—buoyed by government investment in the construction of new homes—as well as an increase in quality, affordable public housing.
Larkin didn't grow up or live in a council estate himself; however, he would have seen such housing in his region. (He lived in the city of Hull for most of his adult years.) The poem's "trees," "new recreation ground," and "courting-places" (lines 3-4, 16-17) suggest a comfortable, well-kept residential environment: not a posh neighborhood, but a nice place for families to put down roots. The phrase "husbands in skilled trades" (line 10) implies that these families have secure, decently paying jobs, a reflection of their country's mid-century prosperity. Their "television[s]" (line 14) are also a sign that they're doing reasonably well; TVs were increasingly common home items in 1950s Britain, but they weren't as ubiquitous as they'd become in later decades.
All in all, the characters in the poem live a pretty good life, especially compared to the hardships of earlier generations. Whether that life satisfies them is another question.
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More “Afternoons” Resources
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External Resources
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Council Housing Estates — Learn more about postwar Britain's council housing estates, the kind of complexes referred to in this poem.
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More on Council Housing Estates — Check out some more background on postwar British council housing, with pictures and examples.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to Philip Larkin reading "Afternoons."
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The Poet's Life — Read a short biography of Larkin at the Poetry Foundation.
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Larkin on TV — Watch a 1981 TV documentary about Larkin's work.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Philip Larkin
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