Half Past Two By U. A Fanthrope

Childhood is the only time without worries and it allows us to admire life. The poem ‘Half-past Two’ by U.A Fanthrope is a narrative poem that describes childhood memories and is nostalgic in quality. The poem is about a boy who has to stay for detention until half past two but did not know how to look at the time and was wondering if half past two ever came. The central theme this poem is memory, childhood and innocence.

The writer explores the theme of innocence and the idea of being under control in a range of ways. Firstly, the boy explains his knowledge of time that is divide into recognizable units. Such as, “gettinguptime” and ‘”timeyouwereofftime”, where the words are joint together. These illustrate the childish nature of language

This is shown through the way the persona was scared at being ‘wicked to remind’ his teacher. This suggests that his teacher is extremely strict, which makes the persona do not dare to remind her. Taking this further, before asking the teacher, the persona had already imagined the teacher’s response if he asks the teacher that she would be ‘wicked’. The word ‘wicked’ signifies the evilness, which the persona refers to the teacher. In addition, when the teacher finally comeback after a long period and found the boy waiting for her. She emphasizes that she ‘forgets’ about him and asks him to leave. The fact that she did not apology implies that she does not feel any guilt towards the persona at all. Another thing this reveals about the teacher is that the teacher is incompetent and unreliable because she had not taught the persona the time and this indicate that the she should not be in the position of a teacher since she is not professional enough to remember the things she was suppose to do. From all the evidence, there is an element of criticism of education system for punish pupils for lack of knowledge where the boy becomes the innocent youth of this system. Perhaps the teachers during the persona childhood are very irresponsible and unorganized so that is why the persona was forgetten.However,this also shows the contrast between adults and child who has a different views towards the time because adults have a lot more things to be done but in this case the persona was left