Dockery and Son is a poem about contrast mainly between Philip Larkin's single and childless life and that of his old university friend Dockery who has married and had a child since they both left university. Larkin considers the differences between his choswen life path and Dockery's, Having an internal debate over who has made the right decisions Larkin thinks about how Dockery must have made his mind up on what he wanted from life at the young age of nineteen when Larkin still hasn't decided what he wants from life himself yet
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However by the end of stanza five Larkin begins reckoning with himself that Dockery is only diluting his life by adding children and a wife not actually improving the quality of it. By the final stanza of the poem Larkin looks at life in an extremely pessimistic way saying it is "first boredom, then fear" which in some ways is true however as a reader it made me think that surely in between the fear and boredom there is a time of enjoyment and properly living which perhaps Larkin overlooks.
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