A/L English Literature New Syllabus Help by RCF:

Poem No. 11: Phillip Larkin’s poem “Money”

Lesson No. 2: Analysis of the Poem

Money
BY PHILIP LARKIN

Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me:

‘Why do you let me lie here wastefully?
I am all you never had of goods and sex.
You could get them still by writing a few cheques.’

So I look at others, what they do with theirs:

They certainly don’t keep it upstairs.
By now they’ve a second house and car and wife:
Clearly money has something to do with life

—In fact, they’ve a lot in common, if you enquire:

You can’t put off being young until you retire,
And however you bank your screw, the money you save
Won’t in the end buy you more than a shave.

I listen to money singing. It’s like looking down

From long french windows at a provincial town,
The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad
In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.

Analysis
Just like George Herbert’s poem “Avarice” in the old syllabus, Larkin’s poem “Money” criticizes money as
something that has dehumanized the society which depends heavily on the power of money for everything
including happiness and the human relationships.

In the first stanza, Larkin personifies money sarcastically: "Why do you let me lie here wastefully? / I am all
you ever had of goods and sex / You could get them still by writing a few cheques" (2-4). Larkin's
personification of money reminds us of the addage "money talks." Also this prompts Larkin to engage in a
discussion about the buying power of money. Within the first stanza, money and spending power are
associated with luxury items and sex. By associating goods with sex, Larkin makes a compelling argument
about how money commercializes everything including the most intimate of human relations: sex.

In the second and third stanzas, Larkin examines the dilemma of spending versus saving. The second stanza is
an examination of the happy middle class man, who spends his money to acquire "a second house and car
and wife" (7). By placing a wife on the same plane with a second house and a car, Larkin makes the critique
that money empowers a man to own his wife like any other piece of property. Larkin questions this ideal
image of what it means to be a prestigious man with a family and cars and homes in modern society, cynically
declaring, "clearly money has something to do with life" (8). Conversely, in the third stanza, Larkin addresses
how the compulsion to acquire money resigns us to "put off being young until [we] retire" (10). Moreover,
Larkin expresses the anxiety and risk of being too tight with one's money may not "in the end buy you more
than a shave" (11). Thus, the dilemma remains unsuccessfully resolved by Larkin.

In the final stanza, Larkin takes a larger sociological approach by looking at how money creates class
differences in society. He employs the imagery of "the slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad" (15)
to emphasize the stark class differences created by the uneven distribution of money. The image of "the
churches ornate and mad" stands in sharp relief to the dirtiness and poverty of the slums. Additionally, this
contrast in images makes an implicit critique about the hypocrisy of the church. The Bible says that "the
meek shall inherit the earth;" however, in reality, churches often tend to amass great wealth and power
while ignoring the needs of the poor. Larkin's "Money" laments the estranging quality of money in modern
times by ending the poem by declaring, "it is intensely sad" (16).