Autobiography at an Air-station
Autobiography at an Air-station - meaning Summary
Waiting Exposes Small Disappointments
The poem describes a mundane airport wait that becomes a meditation on frustration and small defeats. Larkin follows a traveller's passage from routine checks and idle purchases to growing boredom, social withdrawal and gloomy regret about missed alternatives. The poem links physical delay with a larger emotional stasis: expectation hardens into an "Assumption" whose collapse leaves the speaker stale, frightened and resigned to solitude.
Read Complete AnalysesDelay, well, travellers must expect Delay. For how long? No one seems to know. With all the luggage weighed, the tickets checked, It can't be long... We amble too and fro, Sit in steel chairs, buy cigarettes and sweets And tea, unfold the papers. Ought we to smile, Perhaps make friends? No: in the race for seats You're best alone. Friendship is not worth while. Six hours pass: if I'd gone by boat last night I'd be there now. Well, it's too late for that. The kiosk girl is yawning. I fell stale, Stupified, by inaction - and, as light Begins to ebb outside, by fear, I set So much on this Assumption. Now it's failed.
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