Half Past Two by U.A.Fanthrope

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Analysis

Childhood  is a wonderful time of life in which a child transforms to an adult childhood is the most beautiful of all life’s seasons. “The poem Half Past two” presents the perspective of a child and his life. The (poet) of Half Past two speaks about an aged and experienced man casting back on the moment in his childhood, when he has a particular concept of time. In this poem the style is very much that of a child speaking to the author and thinking, “he knew a lot of time: the poem begins with “once upon a “which is an opening of old fairy tales. The poem reflect the stress of a small child who is the past was punished by the teacher for "something" which he could recollect and also the kid could not understand the term "Time" in which the punishment based on. 

In the 1^st Stanza the child is so young he did something wrong but then he says that he forgotten what it was that he had done to deserve his punishment.  The poet expresses the mindset of the child who "did something very wrong" and had to stay back in the school room till half past two.

Throughout the poem the poet uses upper case letters to indicate the signification of the teacher and the consequence that she has on him when the boy does “something very wrong”

 This is repeated in the 2^nd Stanza.  In this stanza too the upper case letters have been used to indicate the importance and significance of the teacher and the seriousness of the punishment.  The poet mentions the time of his punishment.  "She" represents a God like image in the mind of the kid.

In the 3^rd Stanza the poet writes as adult but still uses capital letter for “time” to show how much it meant to him when he was young.  The Poet explains that the teacher did not teach the kids about Time.  It was an irresponsible act of a Teacher.  So he could not understand the time and its relevant to his punishment.  Since the teacher was so strict the kid did not dare to remind her about it. May be he did not want to be wicked or to be cornered.   He personifies the clock to show the boy does not understand the information give from it. But when he becomes adult, he realizes that time was easy to learn.

The Fourth and Fifth Stanzas give more reflections of the dilemma.  The boy explains what he understood about time.  All he knows his "bedtime", "gettinguptime", "timeyouwereoffline" and "Tvtime"etc.  He wonders at the time "Half past Two".

In the Sixth stanza explains the image of clock in the mind of boy as  "clock face","little eyes" and "long legs".  Its an imagination of an innocent child, but he could not understand its language.  We can understand its not the time for the boy to learn the language of time.  It would be very hard for him to understand as learning a new language.

The Seventh and Eighth stanza explain the nature of a child.  He admires the nature and the silence of the world and starts to admire the nature and some parts of his classroom.  This creates a huge difference between the adults who fail to see the nature around them as they are too busy and occupied with various duties and the most  significant element is nature is beautiful only those who admire, this is possible only to small children.

In the Ninth, the poet explains the teacher's attitude who comes back and sees the boy who still waits for the teacher. she says she forgot about the boy as she was busy with her work and tells him to go home.  She did not say "sorry" as she forgot bout the punishment.  This shows her irresponsible nature and she didn't feel guilty to make him to wait for a long time for her.

Tenth and Eleventh gives a vivid picture of the boy who comes back home after a heavy punishment. he comes home during tea time, means already all are having their tea.  The last summaries the boy journeys  in the "clockless" land.  He was waiting in a silent land, a different reality without duties.

The themes are childhood experiences, reflection, isolation, innocence,realities and abandonment. Time is the core concept in this poem since the child was being disciplined “till” a certain “time” without understanding the concept well enough to know what half-past two meant. Time was the stress factor for this child. Another adult he was to scared at being wicked.

Different tones are expressed in this poem such as frustration from the boy, ignorance of the teacher, unfair treatment from the teacher who is irresponsible, Mysterious time concept for the boy who is too innocent to understand it.

Enjambment: most of the sentences are quite lengthy where are the stanzas are small just to stress the ticking of the clock.

Most of the words are used by the author to show that they are made up by the boy.

Omniscience: the state of knowing everything.  In this poem the author seems to know everything about the boy.

Diction:  The choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing.  In this poem the choice of words are childish and made up by the boy.

Divagation: the uses of brackets.  In this poem the words from the boy have different meaning for his childish  world.

Thus the two different worlds of the boy is well brought by the simple expression of the poet.  It contains 11 stanzas  of three lines each, slowly moves to show the importance of Time and the meaning of it to the boy. A free verse and Narrative poem with a simple structure but deep meaning  adds to the sense of reality.

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