Half - Past Two - Fanthorpe Flashcards
bullets points for intro:
About: poem immerses the reader into a mind of a young boy and as he is isolated and forgotten in detention, the boy experiences a deep philosophical awakening due to his ignorance of conventional time which delineates an innocence + imagination Purpose : reveals how escaping the constraints of time –> able to enter a spiritual transcendence and freedom
Tone : innocent –> burst of triumphant awakening –> returning to a tone of peacefulness + fulfilment as it concludes.
Themes:
- Isolation , Solitude, Loneliness
- Deep philosophical awakening / moment of inspiration
- Time + Memory
‘Once upon a schooltime’
Fairy-tale Idiom + Childish Vernacular / Tone:
- immediately immerses reader into fantasy world –> child - like experiences
’ And She said he’d done …’
Capitalisation - denote status
- Effect: gives teacher a God-like + all powerful status in the child’s perspective –> authoritative figure has scolded him
’ He did Something Very Wrong’
Capitalisation:
- emphasises the magnitude of the situation - Hyperbolic Language - how bad could he have been? –> ambiguity / vagueness
- solely feels the weight of adult disappointment –> senses a moral transgression –>
- sense of guilt shown through capitalisation –> but gap between guilt + moral misdemeanour –> cannot balance guilt as he does not know what he has done wrong
what perspective is this poem written in and what is the technique called and what is the effect?
Free Direct Discourse - 3rd person
- projection of the boy’s emotions + inner thoughts
Effect: Immerses reader into child’s confused perspective + creates emotional distance –> emphasising the boy’s naïve confusion and adult perspective of not only authority but also the concept of time
‘he knew a lot of time: he knew / Gettinguptime, timeyouwereofftime, /
Timetogohometime, TVtime,
Lots of compound words
- shows boys understanding about the concept of time
- Adults = time is objective
- Boy= perceives time as experiences / activities
- boys relationship with time is governed by experiences not by numbers or objective reality –> confusion emphasised by free direct discourse
‘All the important times he knew,
But no half-past two’
Rhyming Couplet in middle of poem - unusual as rest of poem is free verse:
- emphasises his confusion + his version of time is all joyful moments –> accentuates his naïve understanding of time
’ the little eyes / And two long legs for walking, / But he couldn’t click its language’
Personification:
- accentuates his naïve understanding - no sense of clocks function
- ‘couldn’t click its language’ - foreign language that only adults understand –> feels distant + isolated + disorientated + removed
from the concept of time
- ‘click’ = **onomatopoeic ‘click’ echoes the ticking of a clock –> showing how he is trying to imitate + understand the language but can’t ‘click’ it - use of colloquialism
’ So he waited, beyond onceupona, / … And knew he’d escaped for ever’
- ‘beyond’ - transcends in an imaginative way
-
verb - ‘escaped’ - has be imprisoned - 2 meanings:
- in detention
- by concept of time
- boy escapes reality + enters emotional transcendence
- Mindful state - alleviated yourself from burdens of past + future –> exists solely in present moment –> senses heightened + amplified –> philosophical awakening
‘Into the smell of old chrysanthemums on Her desk / Into the silent noise of his hangnail made / Into the air outside the window, into ever’ - analyse the anaphora
Anaphora:
- as if physically entering the smell, noise, air, as thought he is lifted out of his bodily experience and merged into a union with the world around him —> transcendent spiritual awakening were senses are all heightened.
- now become God-like, magical being –> teacher no longer has power / authority over him –> after this tercet, ‘she / her’ no longer capitalised
- time + isolation + awakening allows boy to gain a deeper understanding + realisation that overpowers teachers authority
’ Into the silent noise his hangnail made’ , what does it amplify
Oxymoronic sound:
- amplifies + consolidates his spiritual awakening
‘My goodness, she said / Scuttling in, I forgot all about you’
Verb - *‘scuttling’:
- insect, rodent quality –> striped of authority + degraded + ‘she’ is not capitalised
- distasteful + unwanted when she enter when he is in **divine spiritual period
- dismissive tone : ‘forgot all about you*’
‘he escaped into the clockless land forever’
- will always be aware that he was free of time -> time = prisons, traps
- **loss of innocence*, new understanding - time is not just joyful events , is also about hardship + difficulties + abandonment
What is the Form of this poem
tercets:
- snippets - effective in creating pace + flashes of memory
- reflects the passage of time - seconds going by
