Compare and contrast the moods, themes and ideas
created in ‘childhood’ poems from Section C of the Anthology
Your plan needs to be
a detailed account of almost everything that will go in your essay. You don’t
have to write in sentences but all of the ideas need to be there. Laying your
plan out like this also helps to ensure that your final essay will be well
structured. If you write a good plan it becomes a lot easier to write a good
essay.
Main Point 1:
‘All of the poems
portray childhood as a time of simplicity, innocence, excitement, naivety and
purity. This is perhaps most obvious in ‘Half Past Two’ and ‘Hide and Seek’
where it helps convey the excitement of childhood while the purity and
innocence of children is more subtly implied in ‘Prayer Before Birth’ and ‘Once
Upon a Time’.
Evidence: ‘gettinguptime’, ‘capitalisation of ‘She’ and ‘Something
Very Wrong’, the sense of hyperbole and awe at escaping ‘into ever’
Explanation: The
neologisms ‘gettinguptime’ and ‘timeformykisstime’
help to create a sense of naivety in the child as the impression is that he is
unable to properly break up the phrases that he has heard from adults into
their constituent parts and thus treats them as whole ideas. This sense of
naivety is reinforced by the capitalisation of the word ‘She’ to refer to the
teacher which bespeaks the awe and reverence the child feels towards this
figure of authority, an idea further accentuated by the hyperbolical fear the
child seems to have at having done ‘Something Very Wrong’ and his equally
exaggerated conviction that he has escaped ‘into ever’ as a result of not being
able to tell the time.
Evidence: the
tone of barely contained excitement in ‘Hide and Seek’, the use of colloquial
contractions ‘you’d’, ‘they’ll’, the fast pace
Explanation:
Evidence: the
childish fears of ‘bloodsucking bats’ and ‘club-footed ghouls’, the gentle
verbs ‘dandle’ and image of a ‘white light’
Explanation:
Evidence: repetition
of laugh and smile
Explanation:
Main Point 2:
However, in contrast
to the celebration of childhood evident in ‘Half Past Two’ and ‘Hide and Seek’
it appears that the innocence and purity of children is under threat from the
harsh adult world in ‘Prayer Before Birth’ and the two
Nigerian poems.