It is not until the third stanza that the poetic voice finally reveals this to the reader:
“(Being cross, she’s forgotten
She hadn’t taught him Time;
He was too scared of being wicked to remind her.)”
We learn an important fact about the child but we begin to question Fanthorpe because she is giving a detailed process of thoughts in a removed piece of poetry. It seems as though Fanthorpe has based the poem on the past, being the reason for it being so removed. Fanthorpe has tried to express the views of a child by basing this experience on an occurrence in the past. It is not until now that we realise how a child views an adult. The child is fearful because he has made his superior “cross” yet he feels if he reminds her of a mistake she has made he is being “wicked”. This shows us that the child feels inferior to the teacher and he views her as a person who he can never question. Fanthorpe has tried to show the reader how a child is scared of an adult and the child feels insignificant compared to the adult.
This method of the inferior and superior is a lot like the oppressed and oppressor in “You Will Be Hearing From Us Shortly”. Like the child is denied any chance to speak in “Hide and Seek”, the interviewee is in “You Will Be Hearing From Us Shortly”. This is used to relate to society as a whole. This is used to show how there are people who are oppressed in society and there are others who aren’t and in the case of “hide and Seek” it is the child who is ignored. Due to the child being unable to talk back to the teacher, in fear of “being wicked” the child suffers an injustice. He is caused to stay in school for a long time because the teacher hadn’t taught him time and this shows that the child is more concerned about not getting in trouble then getting out on time because he refuses to talk back to the teacher.
It is in the fourth stanza that the child expresses his idea of time:
“He knew a lot of time: he knew
Gettinguptime, timeyouwereofftime,
Timetogohomenowtime, Tvtime,”
The child does not see time in the cold and abstract “clicks” but in a subjective fashion. The use of compound words show the child’s incapability to view time in the pragmatic way that an adult would. This is the reason why “Time” is given a capital letter. The boy is incapable of understanding time as an abstract and because of this he sees time as something very important and it is given a capital letter. Fanthorpe has used these compound words to show the reader that children see things differently to adults. Adults see things for what they are, in a pragmatic and scientific way, whereas children view things differently. Fanthorpe has shown the reader that children use their imaginations and they don’t believe that nothing is true until it is proven.
The children have their naivety and childlike innocence which gives them that open minded view but also causes their imaginations to effect how they see things:
“He knew the clockface, the little eyes
And two long legs for walking,
But he couldn’t click its language.”
This stanza is there to emphasise the fact that the child cannot grasp the idea of abstract time. This also reiterates the fact that children have a far less pragmatic way of looking at things compared to adults and Fanthorpe is trying to show that children cannot understand things like adults can because they have a lack of understanding of practical thinking.
It is now, in the eighth stanza, that Fanthorpe brings us to realise what adults cannot achieve due to their way of thinking. The boy has done what no adult can do, he has “escaped” from time:
“Into the smell of old chrysanthemums on Her desk,
Into the silent noise his hangnail made,
Into the air outside the window, into ever.”
In this stanza Fanthorpe has presented us with two possible views of this experience. The first way we could picture this is that the child has entered a state of grace. He has been removed from the restrictions of time and is liberated from it. The other way we could view this, from a more negative viewpoint, is that the child has realised that he is now no longer a child with petty concerns but has been entered into the adult world where he has to be independent. This brings us to the question of the nature of maturation in the poem. The child’s view seems positive but there are overtones of this harsh reality of growing up and losing this childish innocence. The final two lines take a positive ending:
“He escaped into the clockless land of ever,
Where time hides tick-less waiting to be born.”
This is a positive ending and it makes the stages maturation and the misunderstanding of abstract time seem like more of a good experience then it first seemed.
In the poem Fanthorpe has shown the different views of a child and the world. She has tried to show how a child views time and how a child sees adults. She has also tried to show what a child prioritises, for example the child will stay late at school so they don’t upset the teacher. Fanthorpe also puts overtones of how the views and experiences of a child relate back to society as a whole. Fanthorpe tried to show how the view of a child differs to an adults a lot but that is what gives them their innocence and naivety. The poem “Hide and Seek” uses many of the ideas and techniques that Fanthorpe uses in “Half-Past Two” but has a different impression at the end.
“Hide and Seek” shows many characteristics which are similar to those in “Half-Past Two”. The themes of the poems relate to one another because they both focus on a important experience in a child’s life. The experiences are given links in the way that they are both caused by the child being forgotten by the outside forces which is either the teacher or the group of children.
In “Hide and Seek” we see there is the same use of a child’s experience to express both the stages of growing up, and at the same time contain resonance of society as a whole. The overt image that Scannell has portrayed is of a child coming to terms with the inevitable disappointment of life. Scannell has tried to express the nature of maturation as Fanthorpe has but at the same time they have both attempted to relate this to society as a whole. Scannell has not only shown an experience of a child but has shown how this is a metaphor for life. He has shown how life is about changes from excitement and triumph to disappointment and abandonment. In “Hide and Seek” Scannell has taken this experience of life and put a child through it, expressing the emotions and feelings a child would experience in this position.
Through the first line of the poem we see the immediate effect of using a child to portray this experience:
“Call out. Call loud: “I’m ready.” “Come and find me.”
The sacks in the toolshed smell like the seaside”
From these two lines Scannell has used techniques to adopt the style of a child. The first clear method used is the lack of any logical link between the two lines. These lines of text precede each other in the poem yet they have little or no link to one another. This has an affect of making the poem seem as if directly from the mouth of the child, making the viewpoint of the child more effective. Scannell has also use very short sentences, “Call out” or “Come and find me”. The effect of this is to give the poetic voice a childlike enthusiasm.
The use of the short sentences gives the poem a quick pace and makes it seem far more immediate and lively. This makes the tone of the beginning of the poem seem very excited and effervescent. Scannell has used this to show how the child is disappointed by the harsh changes in the mood and emphasise the child’s disappointment at the end of the poem.
We are given more reason to believe this is young boy recounting his experience through the technique that the poem uses. The poem is written as if it is a stream of consciousness. The poem is not laid out as a normal poem but as it would if it was spoken by a child.
As we progress through the poem the tone takes a sharp change from what it was at the beginning:
“…Whatever happens
You mustn’t sneeze when they come prowling in.
… Don’t breathe. Don’t move. Stay dumb. Hide in your blindness.”
From the language here it is clear that the poem has adopted a sinister tone. The use of sentences like “Don’t breathe.” or “Don’t move.” contain overtones of violence, this creates the change in tone from the beginning. Scannell uses this change in tone from playful and excited to sinister and somewhat daunting to express the naivete of the child. It shows that the child is so concerned about winning the game that he has not realised that the people he was playing with have left. This change in tone is also expressed through the short sharp sentences. This gives an effect of building up the suspense of the poem unsettling the reader. Up to this point in “Hide and Seek”, Scannell gives the impression that although the poem started excitedly and enthusiastically, the poem is beginning to get worse. On the other hand at this point it seems as though Fanthorpe’s “Half-Past Two” begins with the boy in fear in what he has done wrong, but as the poem continues the tone lightens up. It seems as though the general tones of the poems so far have opposed each other.
It is not till we come near the end of “Hide and Seek” that we realise the negative overtones of the poem:
“It seems a long time since they went away,
Your legs are stiff, the cold bites through your coat;
The dark damp smell of sound moves through your coat.”
It is now that the poem takes a complete nose dive and the tone is in complete contrast with what it was in the beginning. At the beginning the rhyming and short sentences create an excited tone but by now when the child realises his friends are gone it completely changes. The use of words such as “dark…damp…stiff…bites” create a vast change in the tone. The child realises that he has been abandoned and this realisation is a stage of maturation. Scannell has used this change in tone to show how the viewpoint of a child, with regards to growing up, can change. The child views ageing as a process which is fun and exciting, as Scannell expresses with the tone at the beginning. Then the boy goes through a harsh realisation and his view of growing up is of abandonment and disappointment like the tone at the end of “Hide and Seek”.
At the end of “Hide and Seek” It is clear that the tone is far darker then the end of “Half-Past Two”:
“…Nothing stirs.
The bushes hold their breath; the sun is gone.
Yes, here you are. But where are they who sought you?”
At the end there is a clear sense of abandonment and humiliation created. Through the changes in tone throughout the poem there are suggestions that this abandonment is inevitable and the tone is one of the major causes for this feeling of desertion and neglect. The use of pathetic fallacy at the end “the sun is gone” darkens the mood even more and intensifies this feeling of abandonment. From the endings of both poems it is clear that “Hide and Seek” ends on a dark tone but “Half-Past Two” seems to end differently. Although “Half-Past Two” seems sinister with the unresolved ending it ends on a lighter tone then “Hide and Seek” and the experience seems far less daunting.
Although the tones of each of the poems is different there are many relationships between both. Scannell and Fanthorpe use different techniques to put through the same message, that the oppressive nature of society will destroy childhood innocence and naivete. In “Half-Past Two” Fanthorpe uses the teacher as the oppressive force in society and she causes the child to have this experience, whereas in “Hide and Seek” the group of children are the oppressive force leaving the child abandoned and embarrassed. The message of “Hide and Seek” is much darker then what is shown by Fanthorpe but the message in both poems are extremely similar. Both poems illustrate that children in society are given far less importance then adults causing them to be oppressed by society, putting them through disappointment and abandonment.