Since children like sweetshops therefore it implies that they love the classroom, and it’s full of things that they want to get, through use of sugar paper and colored shapes. “Sugar paper. Coloured shapes. Brady and Hindley faded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake” Contains juxtaposition, which is a dramatic effect as it involves two opposite images. This shows the reader a comparison of the classroom as a safe peaceful place comparing to the real world and the grim reality of outside the classroom. The faint indicates that being in the classroom, the place of sugar people and colored shapes made Brady and Hindley irrelevant. They became, through the simile, like a smudge; meaning they were still there, but it was no longer fully real.
The next line starts of with “Mrs Tilscher loved you.” Which indicates a direct and clear statement showing how Mrs Tilscher loved all the students in the class and made them feel loved. “She’d left a good gold star by your name. The scent of a pencil slowly, carefully, shaved. A xylophone’s nonsense heard from another form.” Shows multisensory details, such as sight from seeing the gold star, the smell coming from a pencil, and the sound coming from a xylophone. Every sense is being used in the class of Mrs Tilscher. The xylophone has been indicated as a nonsense possibly because the xylophone was interrupting Mrs Tilscher’s class which the child did not obviously want; which thus shows how much the child loved Mrs Tilscher’s class.
“Over the Easter term, the inky tadpoles changed from commas into exclamation marks.” Tadpoles could be imagined as being the same shape as commas at birth, and later on growing up to be of similar shape of the exclamation mark, which is also a metaphor. The reason to why this sentence has been added could be because the Carol Ann Duffy would like to remind the readers of the main topic of the poem which is about change. (From the classroom innocence to the sad reality of the world) “Three frogs hopped in the playground, freed by a dunce, followed by a line of kids, jumping and croaking away from the lunch queue.” Which adds a chaotic image and no longer is the paradise image indicated in the previous stanzas. “A rough boy told you how you were born. You kicked him, but stared at your parents, appalled, when you got back home.” As could be noticed, in this stanza there are starting to be some changes.
The previous stanzas were all positive and paradise-like meanwhile this stanza starts to change the image. This could be considered the stage of changing from innocence to experience. All the experience is the sex and violence that are being introduced to the child. The last stanza is now the conclusion being said. “That feverish July, the air tasted of electricity. A tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot, fractious under the heavy, sexy sky.” Feverish could be a mixture of being hot in temperature as well as making you sick. Also feverish might mean that the children are feverish could be due to the hormone growth that they will be experiencing as they grow up. Synesthesia (Confusing senses/changing it) is used when describing the air’s taste as that of electricity. The heavy sexy sky might link to the confusion that the kids will be experiencing as they are growing up, their thought processes might slightly change and the way they look at things would start to be different. “You asked her how you were born and Mrs Tilscher smiled, then turned around.” It is definite that the child feels comfortable with asking Mrs Tilscher questions, just as if she was her own mother, which adds another evidence of the love that the child has for the teacher. Mrs Tilscher did not want to answer this question as the child is obviously too young to know the reality.
“Reports were handed out.” The reports might also symbolize the end of childhood, as results are based on reflections of the past. “You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown, as the sky split open into a thunderstorm.” The thunderstorm could represent danger and the future life that is going to be waiting for all the children. On the other hand, the thunderstorm might simply be talking about how all the children ran through the gates at once, which implies as though it were like a thunderstorm. There is no more safety that was once in Mrs Tilscher’s classroom. That safety that was represented by Mrs Tilscher’s class has been replaced by the danger, the excitement, the thrill, and the thunderstorm of growing up.
I believe Carol Ann Duffy’s poem has been a great success, as it makes the reader think back to his/her life when you were a child, and how things have always changed as you were growing up. A lot of literary devices have been used which added an interesting touch to the poem in order to address the overall theme of growing up. Duffy has done a great job with giving the readers a lesson to be learned, which shows us how life has changed since childhood.
-Bader Tayyar