This Be the Verse

The poem’s message is that people are inevitably hurt by those closest to them— their parents—the very people who are supposed to nourish and raise them. The fact that they do not intend to mess up their children’s lives—they were simply unable to prevent the passing down through inheritance of their faults—is part of what makes this generational inheritance so tragic to the speaker. The implication is fatalistic since inheritance cannot be undone: Previous generations were no happier, and your unhappiness was foreordained since all people’s faults are passed down to the succeeding generation in perpetuity.

That is the opinion of Larkin’s speaker. It might be said that he is unfair, in the sense that he presents only one side of the story; in reality, people are a mixture of virtues and vices, good qualities and not-so-good qualities, so it stands to reason that their offspring would inherit some of the good and some of the bad. However, a poet is not like an objective reporter, presenting both sides of an issue from a neutral position. Larkin’s speaker is unwilling to acknowledge that human life is any more than an accumulation of inherited “faults” (Line 3), and he is so adamant about this, and expresses it in such forceful, colloquial language, that it is almost as if he is daring the reader to disagree with him.