Hide and Seek Flashcards
Form
- Free verse - show the uncertainty of the child and how childhood expectations are frequently disrupted by reality
- Narrative poem - written in second person from the perspective of his older self
Main themes
- Childhood innocence and naivety
- Realisation (childhood innocence must end)
- Loneliness
Stanzaic structure
- One long stanza
- Shows the building in tension due to his naive expectations, only for it all to collapse as he descends into the harshness of realisation
Rhyme scheme
- Irregular, sometimes half rhyming
- Creates a sense of childhood innonence, but the irregularity disrupts this by making it seem unsettling
Many small, descriptive details integrated throughout the poem
Show how extended the time the child was hiding for felt from the childs perspective
‘Call out. Call loud: ‘I’m ready! Come and find me’’
- Two imperatives
- The tension between the innocence of the child and the harsh realisations of growing older is created as we are faced with two options on who is speaking: His older self, or the child
The exclamation marks show how, at this time, the child feels excited playing this game
‘The sacks in the toolshed smell like the seaside’
- Reported speech
- Sibiliance
- Creates a pleasant undertone, showing that the child is, at this moment, enjoying the game and revelling in his innocence and naivety
The sensory imagery of the seaside is additionally symbolic of childhood innocence
‘They’ll never find you in this salty dark’
- Modal verb
- Emphasises the childs initial confidence in himself and the integrity of the game they are playing - shows his innocence and naivety
‘The floor is cold’
- Volta
- Changes the tone to a slightly more unpleasant and uncomfortable one
‘They’ll probably be searching’
- Adverb ‘probably’
- Shows that the child is starting to develop a sense of uncertainty - he is slowly losing his naivety and innocence
‘The floor is cold . They’ll probably be searching by the swings .’
- Two caesuras
- Develops a blunter, less pleasant tone
‘When they come prowling in’
- Predatory lexis
- Furthers the unpleasant and sinister tone, and shows how their later abandonment of the child is almost harmful, like a predator
‘And here they are, whispering at the door’
- Ambigious pronoun makes them seem sinister
- ‘Whispering’ creates the sense that they are plotting against the child, further showing how the child felt attacked by their actions as they challenged his innocence and naivety
‘Don’t breathe. Don’t move. Stay dumb. Hide in your blindness.’
- Repeated imperatives from the older narrative voice
- The almost satirical tone shows how his older self understands the insignificance of the game and how the seekers do not care about him, but is feeding the child’s naivety in an attempt to highlight it
- ‘Dumb’ is polysemous - shows how the older voice sees the childs naivety as ‘dumb’, yet is satirical as it would be advantageous for the child to not talk when playing hide and seek - this further emphasises the tension between the younger and older version of the poet
‘Moving…stumbles…mutters… scuffle’
- Verbs of action and movement - yet mostly meaningless and inconsequential actions
- Makes the seekers appear uninterested in who they are actually looking for, instead they are simply laughing amongst themselves - this goes against the impression the boy has
‘and they’re gone.’
- End stopping
- Places emphasis on ‘gone’, which juxtaposes the earlier movement of the seekrs
- This accentuates the childs solitude
‘but don’t come out just yet’
- Imperative
- Makes the child seem naive and even delusional as he still believes the seekers care about him
‘They must be thinking you’re very clever’
- ‘Must’ is a modal verb
- Accentuates the childs delusion as he is ever confident that the seekers care about him
‘Thinking’ and ‘Getting’
- Present participles
- Further shows how the child wrongly assumes the seekers are still actively looking for and caring about him
‘cold bites through your coat’
- Personification of cold
- Darkens the imagery, juxtaposing the pleasant imagery at the start - shows the child is developing an unsettling feeling that things might not be how he thought
‘The damp smell of sand moves in your throat’
- Synaesthetic imagery (mixing multiple senses)
- Adds to the darker and bleaker tone which represent his realisations
‘Out of the shed and call to them: ‘I’ve won’’ and ‘The darkening garden watches’
- Juxtaposition
- The child’s excitement (shown by exclamation marks and certainty that he won is contrasted with the stillness of the garden - encapsulating the main tension in the poem
‘The darkening garden watches. The bushes hold their breath’
- Personification
- Emphasises how still and lonely it is for him in this moment that it seems as if only the vegetation is alive
- This contrasts with his expectations of what would happen once he revealed himself
‘The sun is gone’
- Sun is symbolic of innocence, joy and happiness, especially in relation to childhood
- The fact that it is gone is symbolic of his revelations, maturity, and move away from childhood innocence and naivety
