Lesson 3 of IT Home Learning - Analyse a Poem

Part 1

Analyse the following poemThe Son is in Secondary School by Affran Sa’at

My badge has a Latin motto
Hope for the future
The future is hope
Or something

At times black crows try to interrupt
When we sing the National Anthem

It is difficult to maintain
The whiteness of my shoes
Especially on Wednesdays

I must admit there is something quite special
About the bare thighs of hardworking scouts

The Malay chauffeurs
Who wait for my schoolmates
Sit on the car park kerb
Telling jokes to one another

Seven to the power of five is unreasonable

On Chinese New Year
Mrs Lee dressed up
In a sarong kebaya
And sang Bengawan Solo

The capital of Singapore is Singapore

My best friend did a heroic thing once
Shaded all A’s
For his Chinese Language
Multiple-choice paper

In our annual yearbook
There is a photograph of me

Pushing a wheelchair and smiling
They caught me
At the exact moment

When my eyes were actually closed

There are thirty-one lines or nine stanzas and three ‘extra’ lines in this poem. I agree with Ao Lun to some extent.

There is symbolism in the first four lines. The author felt that his school badge represented ‘hope for the future’. Unfortunately, he does not really care about this as he wrote ‘or something’ at the end of the stanza.

In the next two lines, he says that at times, ‘black crows try to interrupt’ when they sang the national anthem. He probably likes his national anthem as that is why he used the word ‘interrupt’.

From lines seven to nine, the writer states that he likes ‘getting dirty’ as in when he does physical activities like soccer. That is why he did not complain even though he had his shoes soiled. He most likely has some form of physical activity going on in school on Wednesday.

Lines ten to eleven tell us that the writer admired the ‘hardworking scouts’ not because they worked hard but because they had thighs that the writer wanted to have.

He also was not very rich as he was envious of some of the other children in his school who were rich enough to have chauffeurs. This is shown when he included the part of chauffeurs in the next few lines.

The writer thinks that his teacher is weird because he stated in lines seventeen to twenty that she dressed up in a sarong kebaya and sang Bengawan Solo when it was Chinese New Year because these were things associated with Peranakan or Malay culture.

He is probably quite smart as he finds the things his less smart classmates do funny in a sarcastic manner. This is when he wrote that one of his classmates was very ‘heroic’ to give all his answers to the Chinese multiple-choice paper as ‘A’.

In the last few lines of the poem, he reveals that he was handicapped. This is a stunning revelation as all through the poem, he has been doing things that normal children his age would be doing. This shows that his disability did not stop him from living a normal life.

This poem does not rhyme but some of the lines have rhythm. This poem is mainly free verse and there is no use of alliteration. There is also no use of imagery or exaggeration. There are, however, uses of metaphors but no uses of similes. Onomatopoeia and idioms are not used in this poem. There are symbols like stated above. The writer’s mood is positive and his tone is quite good as well. He describes his school life as a good time.

Part 2

The days have past
There’s no turning back
But If I could
I would change some things

Well, maybe I wouldn’t

I remember that day
I scored my first goal during P.E.
I was so happy
But it was offside

I didn’t know what that meant

Then there was the day
I got myself into big trouble
Because I called this irritating kid
An idiot

I was in primary 5
Was that still counted as vulgar?
That wasn’t what the teacher thought
But I had a reason

He was interrupting my class’ soccer game
I had the ball when he tripped me
It was on purpose
Of course I would scream at him

Apparently my teachers don’t make mistakes

Those days are gone
As my friend told me:
To make mistakes is human
But to forgive them is against school policy