Philip larkin gives vent to his agnostic dilemma through the poem 'Church Going'A modern

disillusioned man visits church to show awkward reverence, silence of church does not lend
any peace but is tense and unignorable.As a sheer practice he loudly pronounces verses
without feeling a sense of belongingness.In an unconventional way he ponders about the
future of church and does not hesitate in proclaiming his own assumption that they might
fall completely out of use.

Phillip Larkin here points out the church, the objects inside and the ritual are only earthy
things. From his lay point of view he is able to make us see that the church and the ritual are
not particularly special in themselves and will surcome to elements eventually. Comments
such as 'brass and stuff' are born of the fact that he does not believe them to be sacred. In
fact the start of the poem makes it look as though Larkin is not a spiritual man at all. His
actions and thoughts in the church showed him to be an outsider to the whole business. The
end of the poem shows that he is not completely without spiritual thought. His view of
religion is that man wants wants time to be 'silent' 'grow wise' and fulfill 'a hunger in himself
to be more serious'. Visiting the church made him realise that such places were built for this
purpose.

The poem expresses larkins view that the church is a mundane place that has lost its true
religious meaning. In the beggining of the poem he ponders over the dissapearance of the
church and religion into superstition. However in the second hald of the poem he beggins to
question what our existance would be without religion, he acknowledges that people may
lack knowledge of faith yet still believe. He is trying to asnwer a rhetorical question that
suggests that religion is unnnessecary yet we all feel we need something bigger than
ourselves to believe in.

i thought this poem was thought provoking, with the questionable critique of a church and
discussing it from an architech's point of view, completely unmasking the true meaning of a
church. I thought though that this poem was better than some of his other works, as more
and more people enjoy the poem with every stanza. However, the length of the poem works
against itself as it just seems to be getting more boring and more boring. Overall, fantastic
peom.