Aubade Isolation Quotes

The isolation starts early and sticks around. The poem's second line places the speaker alone in his room in the wee hours in the "soundless dark." This description of the dark as "soundless" is important. There isn't a taxicab horn, a dog barking in the distance, the sound of crickets—nothin'. "Soundless" makes the dark and the isolation feel more intense.

Larkin ups the isolation level in these lines. Before, it was just the soundless dark. That was pretty bad. But now, as the speaker contemplates death, we have all the senses muted. It's in these lines that Larkin addresses the speaker's sense of isolation most directly: "nothing to love or link with." It's this connection that our speaker longs for in life and that will be impossible in death. It's the loss even the possibility of this connection that he dreads most.

When is the realization of approaching death the worst? When is it the hardest to deal with? We'll tell you when: it's when no one is around. Contact with other people (and, apparently, booze) helps to keep the fear of death at bay. Our speaker doesn't seem to have many friends, so that would explain his habit of getting "half-drunk at night." This guy really needs a Facebook account.