An Analysis of the BuildingLarkin put "The Building" at the center of his collection for a reason, it is a pillar that supports the rest of the collection with its long verses and many lines, and for this reason, it is perhaps a little clearer than some of his other poems in the ideas and points of view that are expressed through it. Of course, being a Larkin poem, there is an obligatory undertone that many people miss, but in "The Building" it is easier to discern and understand. The title of the poem, "The Building", already alludes to the main theme. of poetry. The word "building" is a very vague term and in its vagueness we can glimpse the author's fear for this building, he cannot specify that it is a hospital as if not saying the word would make it disappear. At the same time, in this poem, Larkin describes the hospital as the real world, everything around it is false, so that the word "building" is contrasted with his vision of what it really is. The poem begins in this indistinct manner and moves towards a much more defined reality: death. The first thing we discover about the building is the way it dominates the author's view, of all the buildings he can see it is the tallest, "it looks for miles". Even if he doesn't want to know what it is, it dominates his vision and his destiny: all the men and women end up in the hospital before they die, and there is that sense of fear of Larkin's death again. You see that the hospital is real life, everything else is fake, you delude yourself all your life about death pretending it doesn't exist and yet when you enter the hospital you finally have to face the truth. He names the places he would like: a hotel, an airport waiting room, a bus, but he can no longer... middle of paper... die. Not yet, maybe not here, but eventually, and somewhere like that." As in most of his poems, he begins with a fear of something, in this case of death, but then realizes that it is actually just a inevitable part of life. And he also comes to understand that if people were not so afraid of death, life would be less appreciated, as he suggests in the last part of the poem: "... a struggle to transcend the thought of dying, because unless his powers are surpassed cathedrals nothing contravenes..." The poem ends disturbingly with "With wasteful, weak, propitiatory flowers". The structure of the poem with nine lines of six lines amounts to 63, but that odd last line makes it more regular, makes it 64 which suggests 8x8, so the last line might seem a bit irregular and strange but it also completes the poem (and also the rhyme scheme).