Comparing Hide and Seek, Half past Two and Leaving school

Comparing Hide and Seek, Half past Two and Leaving school

For this essay I am going to compare the language in three poems and

how they show the persons feelings. These poems are 'Hide and Seek'

'Half past Two' and 'Leaving School'.

Hide and seek is written in a 3rd person perspective. The language is

descriptive, simple, atmospheric and childlike in the way that it uses

personification (giving things human names). The poem suggests that it

is in a 3rd person perspective by the use of the word 'you' at the end

of the poem. The end of the poem is also very sad and lonely, enhanced

by the darkness described. All these factors together produce a dark,

lonely and upsetting mood, these factors are easily shown by the

child's character which is soft, small, frightened and easily upset

from the description that we get.

Half past Two is also written in a third person perspective. The

language and viewpoint of the entire poem is that of a young child's

point of view, this is shown in the language. The language shows this

by its simplicity, its child like words and the way that the writer

puts words together with no spaces.

The language also has some rhyming words in it. The child's character

is simple, he knows what he knows, but that's it and he shows

innocence in the way he thinks. The mood is not really set because the

description does not include the weather, of a descriptive setting but

we get a confused and scared mood from the confused child. The

structure is simple with some italic writing to create emphasis and

the writer uses 3 lined stanzas.

Leaving School is written in a first person perspective and the

language is a lot more complicated but still easily understood the

language in the poem is also very emotional. The poem is about a boy

that is missing home and is easily upset, the poem also gives use a

feeling that he is being forced to grow up to fast, because of some of

the simple things he is worried about and the things he gets wrong. At

the end of the poem the child keeps on drifting in to his own

imaginary world and also shows his lack of confidence. The mood is

upsetting and lonely, this is created by the child's sad situation.

The structure of the poem is in three chunks of lines, and the