Ray Mather Poem

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The poem that I have read to you dictates positive relationships. It is also a poem about prosperity, love and hatred, and shows the affection of friendship, as well as showing a great character. The author has used a variety of language techniques and language devices such as repetition to further endorse his message. Written in 1989, the poem expressed Ray Mather’s inner feelings towards positive relationships in school, as he was a schoolteacher. This fact is very relevant to the modern world, as certain acts of bullying and crude humour happen everywhere. When looking at the way the poem is written, you can tell Ray Mather incorporates the theme of change throughout it, and is further enforced by language techniques. The element of ‘change’ …show more content…

Repetition is also used in the third stanza of the word ‘someone’, which highlights that the boy was a nameless and helpless victim for another’s entertainment. This is supported by the negative metaphor of the boy being a punchbag for entertainment, where the boy is the literal image. The repetition of ‘I’ then changes to ‘I’m’ as the poem goes on, which moves the poem to present tense, emphasising a personal phrase as the boy considers the actions he is capable of. Therefore the boy has now transformed from being isolated and lonely as a negative experience to being brave and bold as a positive experience. The element of ‘change’ now occurs intuitively as Mather mentions time, when saying ‘But how strange is the change, After time has hurried by’ This sentence breaks the poem in two halves, and the contradicted boy we saw at the start of the poem has a heftier and firmer characteristic about him. The following lines, lines 15-20, show the transformation that has occurred. By using direct colloquial sayings, and mentioning appearance, you can tell that this boy is much more confident, and the feeling of anguish and torment he had in the past is

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