By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Toads’ is one of Philip Larkin’s most famous poems. When asked later in an interview how he came up with the idea for the toad as a metaphor for work, Larkin replied, ‘Sheer genius.’ He probably had his tongue in his cheek when he said this, but it is an inspired and instantly memorable analogy. Larkin wrote ‘Toads’ in 1954, and it was published a year later in his second collection, The Less Deceived.
Summary
‘Toads’ is a cry of frustration that sees Larkin grumbling about having to devote his entire day to work, just so he could have an evening (as he put it in the 1982 South Bank Show special about him). He has to give up ‘six days’ of his week to the toad work, which seems ‘out of proportion’ for what he gets in return.
Yet he ends up concluding that work is probably something he is well-suited to, and he wouldn’t want to be one of those people who live without it. For he, too, is ‘toad-like’.
Why the toad? What did the poor toad do to deserve such an unflattering portrayal? Toads are considered ugly, damp, slimy, but also servile (the word ‘toady’, formed off the back of the animal, denotes someone who is sycophantic and eager to please).
Work strikes Larkin as being like that: work is unromantic, base, distasteful, unattractive. But toads are hardly the most fearsome of creatures, and, as foes from the animal kingdom go, would be pretty easy to vanquish. Would you rather be attacked by a toad or a tiger? No contest.
This lends the image of Larkin driving the ‘brute’ toad off with his pitchfork an air of comicality, like a gardener disposing of an unwanted garden pest. Surely the toad can be easily got rid of.
But it’s not that simple, of course. Larkin’s deft use of off-rhymes – work/pitchfork, life/off, and so on – suggests his displeasure with having to work for a living, but these half-rhymes also come to reflect his flawed stance against work. There is something unconvincing about raging against the machine and wanting to enjoy a life free from work, for such a life would be oddly hollow.
Larkin himself held this view: he was fond of saying that a poet only needs two hours a day in which to write, so what is he going to do for the rest of the day? And then, another problem: even if he didn’t work for a living in a day job, in order to get the money, the fame, and the girl – which he identifies as his main goal – he would have to work anyway, so he would never truly escape the toad work. There is another toad within him, compelling him to work – for otherwise he would never achieve anything.
As romantically appealing as those lispers and losels may appear to him, he knows he could never live like them. He’s not brave enough. Toads, as remarked earlier, are associated with servility, and are not the bravest animals in the world. He is ‘toad-like’ because he could never turn his back on civilisation and all the benefits it brings – financial security in the form of his pension, for one thing, to say nothing of fame, riches, and sex – in order to live among the loblolly-men. Dream on.
Larkin’s reference to ‘loblolly-men’ has puzzled readers, until we realise that ‘loblolly’ was old slang for a bumpkin, the implication being that a ‘loblolly-man’ is a country bumpkin or peasant. A ‘losel’, similarly, is a rake or scoundrel, a general ne’er-do-well.
This concept of the two toads, the one representing the institution of work itself and the one that lurks deep within Larkin, helps to explain the meaning of that final stanza: it’s hard not to be a bit of a toad when you slave away at work all day, just as it would be difficult to chuck in the job when you harbour a toad-like approach to living as part of your nature.
‘Toads’ sees Philip Larkin examining and analysing his own attitudes to work, and many workers have found themselves agreeing with his assessment. It would be lovely to give it all up, wouldn’t it?
But, as Larkin argued in ‘Poetry of Departures’, a poem he completed a couple of months before ‘Toads’, there is something false about the dream of giving everything up and the perceived freedom such an act would bring. ‘Toads’ brilliantly encapsulates the emptiness of such a dream.
Larkin would return to the theme of work in his sequel, ‘Toads Revisited’. We include ‘Toads’ in our selection of great poems about work.
I always felt that the poem ‘Toads’ capture peoples attitudes is a very subtle way. The idea of change and believing in something better in life, yet, no one likes change. The phrase ‘comfort zone’ may not have been used much in Philip Larkin’s days ( I wouldn’t know), but this piece sums that idea very well. The people living in the lane may seem like a romantic notion to the poet but it means he must change away from his present and worst still his possible future comfort when drawing his pension. But the ‘Toad’ work comes in many forms, basically a form of survival; we chose the method of survival or bumble along, get comfortable and although yearn for change we remain subdued. (Now I am just going off at a tangent).
Another fabulous analysis of a poem I have never encountered before, although I am reasonably familiar with Larkin’s poetry. Thank you!
There is one grammtical awkwardness/puzzle at the end. He mentions 3 things then says it’s difficult to get ‘either’ in one sitting??
I like it.
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I have never liked Larkin or his work. However, you do a very good job on making him worth spending time over.
I think my problem is because his attitudes, as here, were stuck in his time period: 1950s England, with its immediate post-War slump in energy, ideas, ambition, its’ rationing of food, and of praise for anything at all.
The poem captures this very well; and so it would be a mistake to apply our very different mind-set to it and consider it as addressing contemporary issues. What remains relevant, and what not, are also important questions to ask
Thanks for the kind words, Michael. I agree that Larkin was of his time in a great number of ways, some of them problematic (as Andrew Motion’s 1993 biography revealed). He’s a master of language and metre though, so if we’ve inspired anyone to return to his poetry and give it some further attention, there’s no higher praise we can ask for :)