In Mrs Tilscher’s Class - Carol Ann Duffy Flashcards
(36 cards)
“You could travel up the Blue Nile”
“You” - personal pronoun, makes it a real experience for the reader too. Bringing the reader into the memory too. Everyone has experienced this.
“Travel” - active not passive speaker, making the journey with her. Memory of childhood. Power of learning/teaching.
“Blue Nile” - exotic. Calm. Beautiful. Contrast to classroom. Teacher using skills to make it real for students. Repetition of “oo” sound, flows easier, happy memory, remembering.
“With your finger,”
Sense of touch. Actively engaged in lesson. Memory is very powerful.
“Chanted the scenery.”
Sense of sound. Connotations of singing. Remembering. Happiness. How she teaches and how they learn. Repetition of ways to learn.
“Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswân.”
Real places. Brings the settings to life. What Mrs Tilscher did for her she is doing for the reader. Short, non-sentences. Stopping to take stock of each place.
“Skittle of milk”
Sense of sight. Metaphor, glass bottle of milk shape of a bowling skittle, helps us imagine, bowling is fun and so is school.
“And the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust.”
Literally Geography is done and rubbed off the board. Sense of sight. Tapping into memories, that memory is disappearing. That chapter of education is over, she has to move on.
“A window opened with a long pole.”
Details of her memory. Gives us the impression she is small (young) by comparison.
“The laugh of a bell swung by a running child.”
Personification. Bringing everything to life. Classroom full of life and joy. She felt as if everything in the class was alive. Bringing our memories to life.
Laugh: Enjoyment, happiness. Loves school at that point.
“This was better than home.”
Short sentence. Her memories are short and snappy. She is excited, happy.
“Enthralling books.”
Enthralling: all encompassing in the most positive way possible. Couldn’t get enough of the books. Love for learning and Mrs Tilscher’s class.
“The classroom glowed like a sweetshop.”
Connotations: Happy, shiny, exciting, enticing.
Simile: one of the most exciting things for a primary kid. Happiness, joy, enticing. Building memory. Mrs Tilscher’s classroom for her was the best place in the world. Tapped into all of her senses.
“Sugar paper. Coloured shapes.”
Non-sentences, good memories, things she loved in the class.
“Brady and Hindley faded,”
First hint of the outside world. True crime, moors murders, killed kids. Outside world was scary but when she is in the classroom she forgets about the encroaching outside world, becoming more prominent. No longer shielded. Could become more important. Faded because we are back in Mrs Tilscher’s class. Enjambment.
“like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake”
Faint: Negative thing, will lessen as time passes.
Smudge: Classroom term, link to education, memory of classrooms. Not perfect, hard to erase, can move on.
“Mrs Tilscher loved you.”
Short sentence. Happiness, contentment, relaxation, safety, reliable, trustworthy, dependable.
“a good gold star”
Alliteration of ‘g’ sound. Guttural sound brings emphasis, prominent happy memory. Achievement. Enjoyment. Mrs Tilscher really cared about them.
“scent of a pencil”
Sense of smell. More relatable for reader. Engage reader in memory.
“slowly, carefully, shaved.”
List. Trivial things, when you love something they begin to matter. Deliberate, sensual. About love and warmth she remembers from school. Every day.
“A xylophone’s nonsense heard from another form.”
Nonsense: Creativity. No pressure or stress, relaxed atmosphere. Joy in this place. Inviting. Sense of sound.
“Over the Easter term”
Change, birth, sexual awakening. She is growing up, learning more about life.
“The inky tadpoles changed from commas into exclamation marks”
Olden day ink wells from pens, nostalgia.
Focus of the stanza. Change in her education and her personally as she grows up.
‘Commas to exclamation marks’ Shape of tadpoles, links to education. Exclamation marks tall, young, small children to tall young adults. Growing up. Commas ae there to slow things, no drama, breaks in sentences. Exclamation mark, frantic emphasis. Maturing. Young calm growing into frantic young adulthood. How quickly it happens and how you feel as it happens.
“Three frogs hopped”
Continued metaphor, positive, playful experience
“freed by a dunce”
Free not positive, backed up by ‘dunce’ (class clown) stupidity. Nostalgia - positive connotations of school questioned. Contrast. Outdated.
“followed by a line of kids, jumping and croaking away”
Awkward hypersensitivity of being an adolescent.
‘Croaking’ - Boys voices change.
Positive, playful stuff contrasted with ugly behaviour.
‘Away’ - Movement away from order and rule following adolescents word conform or follow rule.
