Carol Ann Duffy's poem "In Mrs Tilscher's Class" expresses the poetic speaker's love of literature in the context of an intriguing personal narrative. Such passion came from her primary school teacher as Duffy's protagonist grows into adulthood - from a dramatized experience in her classroom to exposure to the outside world as she generally loses her innocence This poem can literally be read by both the perspectives: the childish one and the adult one. It generally uses sensual images and bizarre juxtapositions with subtle historical references from "Moors Murders" and sexual allusions, so that this poem brilliantly expresses the loss of naivety of an entire childhood in a subtle way. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In the first verse, Duffy begins with a bright and innocent tone, very contrary to popular belief. The first word “you” directly immerses the reader in the classroom by emphasizing Duffy’s school nostalgia, or so they particularly thought. Includes visual and tactile images of “your finger tracing the route” on a map followed by a list of countries “Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum, which in essence is quite significant. Aswan.” syntactically separated into a rhythmic beat in a subtle way. Duffy uses our senses to vividly and definitively portray her childhood imagination in a very important way. Furthermore, Duffy's use of personification in “the laughter of a bell” expresses a joyful experience. This contrasts with the "plaster pyramids" which emphasize the fragile nature of life which is generally "dusted off", symbolizing the harsh reality of life often overlooked from a naive perspective, which specifically is quite significant. The second stanza shows an evolution from the character of a child who loses his innocence in a subtle way. First he deduces that life at home is not good in all respects and going to school is his escape route. His love of literature and his teacher, Mrs. Tilscher, generally stems from his exposure to "compelling books" followed by "sugar paper" imagery, as you can generally eat paper thinly. The setting is particularly restricted to the early 1960s as there is a reference to the murders of the Moors "Brady and Hindley" subtly juxtaposed throughout the classroom decorations. Nonetheless, the atmosphere and tone are still visually bright with the classroom “shining like a candy shop”. Duffy had used all five senses: taste, sight, smell, touch and hearing in a particularly important way. But in the last line, the personification of the xylophone evokes joyful memories, but it is not enough to mask the loss of childhood innocence, which is literally quite significant. The third stanza dramatically defines the actual moment of physical change. The first part of the verse is essentially a metaphor for what happens in the second part: "Three frogs"..."freed from a donkey" for the most part is a metaphor for the rather rude boy, signaling a loss of innocence by telling her how it is born. The rude boy allows the “tadpoles” to mostly become “frogs,” which is quite significant. Aside from physical growth, his level of intellectual growth for all intents and purposes increases as the tadpoles, or babies, change “from commas to exclamation points” in subtle ways. And as you get older, the idea of time passing faster is mostly represented through the change in structure of the type where the last two stanzas are a line shorter than the first two,.
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