Half Past Two Annotated

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The poem ‘Half-past Two’ written by U.A Fanthorpe is about a little kid who had done something very wrong and had to stay behind in school till half past two. However the boy has no understanding of this as he has not been taught how to read time. The reason of this detention has not been mentioned. “(I forgot what it was)” as said in stanza 1, the use of brackets shows how it wasn’t important to the boy. In stanza 6, Fanthorpe uses personification to show how the boy thinks of the clock. “He knew the clock face, the little eyes and two long legs for walking, but he couldn’t click its language.” The phrase “He couldn’t click its language” shows how learning the clock was as hard as learning a new language. “The little eyes”, “Two legs for walking” illustrates the little boy’s childishness and innocence. The literary device of personification has an effect on the reader that the boy is innocent and makes the reader feel the boy’s point of view of the clock and allows them to sympathize for the boy. Thus, Fanthorpe creates a tone of the boy and how he understands the clock/time. Fanthorpe uses the boy to describe the world around him from his view in stanzas 7 and 8. “So he waited, beyond onceupona, Out of reach of all the timefors, And knew he’d escaped for ever”,…show more content…
He starts admiring the nature and the few things in the classroom around him. This would suggest that adults are so busy with time and work that they forget about the worthy things around them. The literary device of an oxymoron is used in stanza 8. “Silent noise” It creates an effect that the noise was silent, however a noise cannot be silent/noise is not silence. Therefore, Fanthorpe suggests that childhood is probably the phase where you don’t have to worry about time and

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