"Woe is Me"

"Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison - 
Just for paying a few bills!"
("Toads" - Philip Larkin)


Larkin combines both sarcasm and wit to criticize the middle class of his day.  The toad is used throughout as a symbol of the hardships in the average person's life.  Many feel as if they can not escape from their working reality.  The symbol of the toad is obviously negative; for example, the toad squats on his life with "sickening poison."  The middle class man is complaining because he has to work six days a week with no means of escaping his fate.  He even goes as far to say that the poorest of the poor have a "better life" because they do not have to work.  Even though they live in the worst of worst conditions, the speaker goes as far to say that "no one actually starves."  I'm assuming that the author is being sarcastic here.  Obviously, many people have died of starvation.  No living person has actually ever died from working day in and day out.  A second toad is mentioned later that is said to be inside the speaker.  This toad limits the speaker from money, girls, and fame.  Larkin is criticizing the working class here for only striving for fame and fortune out of life.   Many people do not care about having a family or purposeful life.  At the end of the poem, the author presents irony.  The speaker says that he possesses spiritual truth.  However, in the stanza before this statement, the speaker talks about fame and money.  The author establishes that through the desires of the middle class, spiritual truth is actually absent from their lives.