Comparing Two Poems: Half-past Two by U A Fanthorpe and Leaving School by Hugo Williams
Comparing Two Poems: Half-past Two by U A Fanthorpe and Leaving School by Hugo Williams In Half-past Two, U A Fanthorpe writes as a man reminiscing about how he had viewed 'time' as a child and recounting the moment when it had struck him he had to learn how to tell it. Hugo Williams' Leaving School is also one man's memories of childhood. This time it examines his first weeks at boarding school. Both poems set out to present childhood experiences in an interesting way. The first lines of the two poems manage to immediately strike your attention and set the tone of the whole poem. Half-past Two begins "Once upon a schooltime", which gives you the impression that the rest of the poem will be in quite a childish tone and also creates a kind of fairytale atmosphere. Leaving School starts off: "I was eight when I set out into the world wearing a grey flannel suit". "Set out into the world" is a blatant exaggeration, the child is only going off to boarding school, but suggests how it the boy saw it as a big adventure. "Wearing a grey flannel suit"- this gives us the impression of an adult, but we have been told that the child is eight. This again shows us how much of an adventure it was for the boy and tells us how he was being made to grow up very fast "I had my own suitcase". In Half-past Two, the thing that is preventing the boy from growing up is his inability to tell the