SELF'S THE MAN (Poem) By Philip Larkin

Just like Dockery and Son, as well as a number of Larkin's other poems, Self's the man is another poem about life choices and family.

This poem is very similar to Larkin's other poems in the fact that throughout the course of the poem, the persona's emotions and feelings change and eventually he has an epiphany at the end of the poem. He starts off with what seems almost like admiration for Arnold, the way he has made something of his life and how he has coped with marriage so well, however this soon changes, subtly in the third stanza where the persona almost sound sorry for Arnold, as if he got the short straw, the bad end of the stick. The final change in emotion at the end of the poem is really obvious, when he physically says: 'but wait, not do fast:'

The poem begins very suddenly, almost as if in answer to a question or a statement that had been said of him just before the poem started. You can just imagine someone turning round to the persona and telling him that he is really selfish and why couldn't he be more like Arnold (the other person in the poem), and then him turning round and almost shouting: 'Oh, no one can deny / That Arnold is less selfish than I', in response to the people.

The only thing that really changes in the first five stanzas is the tone of the persona's voice, as the more he describes Arnold's life, the more he feels sorry for him and the more he begins to think that he got a better deal than Arnold. However once we reach stanza six, things change quite dramatically and things really do begin to get interesting. The persona changes his mind about Arnold's decision to get married and begins to try and convince us that there is no real difference between the two men, and that Arnold is not 'less selfish than I', but in fact he is just as selfish, if not more so.

The argument that the persona bases this theory on, is that Arnold wanted to get married, he wasn't forced into it, he didn't sacrifice anything to get married. He wanted a wife and children and therefore marriage is the most selfish thing Arnold could have done because it is what HE WANTED TO DO. Arnold 'still did it for his own sake.'

The persona comes to the conclusion that there is no reason for him being called selfish, or more selfish than Arnold, because just as he avoided marriage for himself and his own reason, so did Arnold get married and start a family. 'So he and I are the same'.

Ultimately, I think that what Larkin is trying to say here, is that no matter how hard we try to be selfless, when it comes to life choices 99% of the time, we will be selfish and make a choice in terms of how we want our live to turn out. Even if you want to live it for someone else's benefit, its still what you want to do with it... it still selfish, and we can't help it.