Half-past Two is about a very young boy, perhaps in his first years of school. This boy crucially does not know the time, which is theme of this poem, he has done “Something Very Wrong”, we are not told what exactly, and he is punished to wait for her till Half-Past Two. His ideas of time are for example “Gettinguptime”, “Timeformykisstime”, and of course “Tvtime”. As he begins to wait for her he slowly slips into a section of time he has never encountered before. He waits for her and once she comes he is saved as he now slotted back into his normal daily routine. U A Fanthorpe does not generally place herself within a poem, she creates fictional characters and writes a poem about them, I think this is one of those cases.
There are two very different structures to the poems, Half Past Two consists of 11 verses each one 3 lines. One verse is of the teacher speaking. In contrast Leaving School is 3 long verses. The first verse is 11 lines long, and each verses becomes one line shorter e.g. 11 lines, then 10, and finally 9.
Leaving school has I feel quite a sombre tone through out, this is achieved by having one narrator, the eight year old boy, telling us of his experience at boarding school. His experience is quite saddening and there is not one example of happiness felt by him in the whole poem. I feel that there is quite a serious undertone to the poem, as he suffers memory loss, “I’d forgotten to hang something up”, finds the work hard, “I didn’t like the work” and finally he slips into his own reality “I was miles away…leaving school”. He has found a way to forget about the pain he feels by slipping into his own reality, where there are no rules. The poem is written in first person.
Half-past two is totally different, the tone of the poem, is very childlike. I feel there is no serious meaning to this poem, as U A Fanthorpe has purposely done this to bring across the idea of the child being quite young. The poem is written in third person. Words like “onceupona”, “Timetogohomenowtime”, and “notimeforthatnowtime” where the words are spelt correctly just have had the spaces taken away, give a childlike feel to the poem. U A Fanthorpe has also deliberately placed emphasis on key words by placing capital letters on them, for example “He did Something Very Wrong” shows seriousness with the use of capitals. Most of the childlike words in the poem end in time, which help to give the poem fluidity. Another way U A Fanthorpe creates a childlike quality to the poem is with word “chrysanthemums”, which is spelt correctly but contains the words mum, I feel she purposely chose this flower as it contains the word mum, instead of another flower like a rose, these techniques she has used are quite skilful on her part. There are a few part of the poem where the speech is in brackets, this is when the child in the poem is reminiscing. In Leaving school I have an image of quite a sad little boy who only longs to go back home to his family, this is sharp comparison to Half-Past Two which is light-hearted due to the childlike words, I see a young lost little boy in a land before time.
In conclusion I can see that there are two very different ideas to education, the idea presented in leaving school is that the transition from a normal school to a boarding school can be a hard one, especially for an eight year old. Throughout the poem the boy slowly becomes unhappier and lonelier, till he creates his own reality. Half past two gives a view from a child’s perspective; the idea of being lost in a timeless land comes over light-heartedly.