Poetry Analysis-Childhood

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English Coursework

Laura Hui

To what extent did these poems effectively construct the theme of childhood?

        

Innocent. That’s what we were during the course of our childhood, before we became corrupt, greedy and stressful. The poems “Half-Past Two” (HP2) by U.A. Fanthorpe, “Piano” by D.H. Lawrence and “My Parents kept Me from Children who were Rough”(Rough Children) by Stephen Spender reminds us of how innocent life was when we were children. They reveal to us how arrogant we were lacking knowledge of the real world. Through diction and persona, emotion and depth, the poems play on the nostalgic senses for our bittersweet childhoods.

        “Once upon a schooltime”, that is the first line of the poem “Half-Past Two” it immediately shows that it is narrative, almost as if telling a story to a child. The second line of the first stanza, “He did Something Very Wrong”, this emphasizes the childlike thinking, the guilt of doing “Something Very Wrong” the very simple minded child worrying about a simple thing. Then the author’s voice comes in, as if stating a side note, “(I forget what it was)” this shows again the narrator and the persona in the story, an adult telling their tale. The next line, starting a new stanza “and She said he’d done Something Very Wrong” the capitalization of “She” shows the child understands authority and portrays the teacher in a very high position. The third stanza is entirely made up of the author’s persona, in parentheses “(Being cross, she’d forgotten She hadn’t taught him Time. He was too scared of being wicked to remind her.)”. The word “wicked” shows how children can portray something that they think is very serious but in reality it isn’t. Notice that the word “Time” is capitalized, signifying the importance of it in the poem and the way the child sees it, as something important but unfamiliar.

        Fanthorpe uses a very effective style in portraying the child’s point of view. She mainly uses the compression of words. “Gettinguptime, timeyouwereofftime, timetogohomenowtime, TVtime” this shows how the child does not understand and comprehend time in numbers but rather in categories of specific events. This also affects the reader’s image of the child; it makes the reader think the child is cute and innocent because of their lack of knowledge. Then Fanthorpe using the child’s eyes, describes the clock using personification and onomatopoeia, “He knew the clock face, the little eyes And two long legs for walking, But he couldn’t click its language”. The child knew what a clock was but having never being taught time he couldn’t “click its language”. Being a child he didn’t have an organized schedule, he knew the important times like getting up from bed or going to school “But not half-past two”, not numerically.

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        The seventh stanza starts off with “So he waited, beyond onceupona” indicating he was starting to get bored and was starting to daydream, drifting into his own world. “And knew he’d escaped for ever” this kind of escapism is hard when you grow into adulthood, always too busy always too stressful, but here he is escaping from reality, nothing can bother him anymore. Describing his environment, the author uses repetition creating a rhythm “Into the smell of old chrysanthemums on Her desk, Into the silent noise his hangnail made, Into the air outside the window, into ever”. The words “into ...

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