Toad
No need for a spoiler alert here. Toad imagery and symbolism is a big part of "Toads." Larkin makes good use of our amphibian friend's long symbolic tradition and all of the slimy, warty, negative...
Unpleasant Sights, Sounds, and Smells
Larkin includes some pretty unpleasant sensory details and imagery in "Toads." He wants us to really feel, to experience, the speaker's distaste and disdain for the "toad work" he was to deal with...
Repetition
Larkin makes use of some well-placed repetition and wordplay to emphasize one of the poem's key ideas: the inescapability and degrading qualities of work. Sounds fun, right? Larkin gets extra vocab...