The Explosion

What are the implications of death when it is an accident? Is there anything more terrifying: a day laid out to be routine suddenly shattered by the rude intrusion of death, a reality you had pretended simply did not exist?

“The Explosion” uses the catastrophic mine disaster to offer a sobering meditation on the reality of death by accident, how death is always lurking, always approaching, and always premature. Despite the happy busyness of the opening stanzas, what hangs about the miners goofing with each other, laughing, chasing down rogue rabbits, smoking one last pipe before they head down the mine for another day of work, is that dark shadow that points toward the mine entrance (Lines 2-3). Whether we elect to live with the realization, everybody dies; the poem argues, everyone lives every day in the shadow of accidents. We live like those miners heading to the mine entrance, happily ignoring that reality.

But Larkin is not content to introduce happy characters and then simply kill them off. That would render the poem too dark, too depressing for a poet intrigued by the strategy of hope and the logic of endurance. The miners do not live long enough to feel the gravitational pull of disappointment, the weight of lost opportunities, and the sheer impress of a wasted life.