Wires
Wires - meaning Summary
Boundaries Enforced by Pain
Larkin uses the image of electric wires and young steers to explore how curiosity and desire lead to risk and injury, which then enforce caution and conformity. The poem presents a bleak, pragmatic view: youthful restlessness repeatedly encounters harsh limits, and suffering teaches restraint. The wires function as impersonal forces that convert impulsive behavior into cautious habit, suggesting experience, pain, or social boundaries shape the individual’rom then on.
Read Complete AnalysesThe widest prairies have electric fences, For though old cattle know they must not stray Young steers are always scenting purer water Not here but anywhere. Beyond the wires Leads them to blunder up against the wires Whose muscle-shredding violence gives no quarter. Young steers become old cattle from that day, Electric limits to their widest senses.
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