Compare the two poems, 'The Best of School' and 'Last Lesson of the Afternoon' by DH Lawrence.

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        Compare the two poems, ‘The Best of School’ and ‘Last Lesson of the Afternoon’ by DH Lawrence.

        D H Lawrence became a qualified teacher in 1908, he took up a post at Davidson Road School, Croydon. The school had some very poor boys and it was not to be an easy introduction for the young schoolmaster. However, he was dedicated and innovative. For example he encouraged the boys to act out ‘The Tempest’, rather than sitting at their desks reading it.

        The poem The Best of School is written through the eyes of a teacher. It is an optimistic vision of young boys learning in the classroom. Last Lesson of the Afternoon is also written through the eyes of the teacher but it shows a more negative approach by the students and the teacher.

The poems both have a different layout, The Best of School has a more irregular pattern, sentences are of varying lengths and each stanza is also of different length. The layout for Last Lesson is much more regular, the sentences are of regular length and the stanzas are the same size. Also in Last Lesson the sentences go onto the next line enjambed.

        Last Lesson of the Afternoon opens with the line, ‘When will the bell ring, and end this weariness?’ From this line we can tell that the teacher is facing an uphill struggle and he is waiting for the bell to ring so he can be relieved of teaching these children. The first stanza refers to the children as being a, ‘pack of unruly hounds!’ When the writer refers to the children as being unruly hounds I think he is trying to explain that there are a lot of disobedient children and there is only one teacher to control this pack of hounds. The fact that the children are being referred to as animals means that man should control them but the teacher can’t control his hounds. The teacher says, ‘How long have they tugged the leash, and strained apart.’ Again the teacher uses violent imagery of these hounds pulling in different directions. The teacher is holding their leash and is trying to guide them, ‘On a quarry of knowledge.’ However the hounds ‘hate to hunt’, the children hate learning and are not interested in gaining knowledge. In this first stanza of Last Lesson of the Afternoon we can see that the teacher is weary and feels fatigue and we are also introduced to the violent imagery of the unruly hounds.

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        The opening stanza in The Best of School contains many references to soothing natural imagery. The atmosphere is completely opposite to the atmosphere in the classroom in Last Lesson of the Afternoon. The opening lines give us a sense of the children being protected inside the classroom. ‘The blinds are drawn because of he sun,’ this gives us a sense of the classroom providing a protective atmosphere whereas in Last Lesson we get a sense of violent imagery in the classroom. The second and third lines are a contrast to each other. The second line says that ‘The boys and ...

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There is much useful analysis here, but the essay writer neither declares his/her intentions in writing this essay, nor any overall conclusions. As such we are given no criteria to judge how effectively the writer has discharged his/her task. There is a little plagiarism in the first paragraph. Sentence and paragraph construction are well controlled and the lexis is mostly up to the task. 3 stars