Hide and seek Flashcards
(12 cards)
What is the form of hide and seek
Free verse
What is the structure of hide and seek
-free verse and one long stanza-allows the child to deliver an effective internal monologue and shows the unstoppable passing of time
-half rhymes give a disjointed feel to symbolise how unpredictable life is
What is the tone of hide and seek
At beginning: excitement, joy
Middle: discomfort, fear
End: loneliness and isolation
What are the themes of hide and seek
Lost innocence, war,, childhood, isolation, loneliness, abandonment, pain, danger, anxiety, disappointment, memory, realisation, knowledge
‘They’ll never find you in this salty dark’
-the ‘they’ gives a pck mentality as their identity is never specified
-‘never’ acts as a intensifier and also gives prolectic irony as he is never found
-the second person pronoun ‘you’ highlights how he is reassuring himself c
-uses synaesthesia- multi sensorial creating an evocative image
-direct speech from the child gives a sense of realism, excitement
‘Don’t breathe. Don’t move. Stay dumb. Hide in your blindness.
-repeated imperatives- the tone begins to change as he feels increasingly anxious-also mimetic of military commands
-the caesuri portrays his breathlessness with fear
-the adjective ‘dumb’ simultaneously presents how he is lacking in intelligence as he is not included. Also shows how he tries to remain naive and ignorant and blind to the betrayal. It also becomes a metaphor for his desire to stay in the comfort of his childhood innocence
What will you write in intro
Ostensibly the free verse poem ‘hide and seek’ is a poem about childhood however symbolically it means the profound disappointment of adult life.
What happens in the listing part
Scannell uses polysyndetic listing when reciting the places that the seekers may have gone, increasing the tension and pace of the poem
-he uses the rhyming couplet ‘lane’ and ‘again’ and then the half rhyme ‘clever’ and ‘over’. The complete rhyming couplet presents how he still clings to hope however the transition to the half rhyme portrays how he begins to lose confidence building a sense off uncertainty. The end stop after ‘over’ then conveys the complete loss of hope as he realises he has been abandoned.
‘It seems a long time since they went away.’
-presents the passing of time linking to half past two further emphasised by the assonance
-end stopped shows how he has given up hope and has come to the realisation he has been abandoned
-poem becomes a metaphor from child to adulthood as he is no longer playing the game
‘Out of the shed’
-situational irony as he should be sought but is now seeking-contrasts to his premature victory and triumph as he becomes aware of the outside world and joined the others yet he will always be an outsider to them
-ostensibly he is just coming out from the shelter however metaphorically he is realising the flaws of the world and how he is alone
‘Yes, here you are. But where are they who sought you?’
-the rhetorical question shows awareness that there is no one to answer him and that he is alone
-tone shift to intense disappointment
-shift into a more adult voice shows realisation of abandonment with clarity and also the wisdom of the adult lense
-the poem ends on the emphatically placed ‘you’ universalising the experience and becoming a direct address to the reader
What poem does hide and seek link to
-poem at 39:childhood memories
-piano: contrasting images of childhood
