Football After School Essay

“
Football After School
”
What Parental feelings does McCarthy explore in the poem and how does she use language to present them to you?

Football after school is a poem about a mothers, or the poets’, struggles in the harsh realisation of her son maturing, and having to experience school. Patricia is feeling powerless and worried about her sons inevitable future of him going to school which he has to endure. We observe the poet sharing her thoughts, and images, in each verse her view changes on how she thinks her son will combat “Football After School” . The theme of football fears her, as he “dribbles the sin about the place”, which conveys how she thinks the football as the “sun” will become his life, and will become his focus rather than his mother before. We see her worries change, from be concerned about how she can help him and how his attitudes will change when he matures into a teenager. The mother is caring for her son, but we don’t know how the son feels towards the mother. Insecurity is a key role in how the mother feels, as she becomes more distant to her fragile son growing up.
McCarthy explores the idea of growing up is inevitable, and insists to the son that he is going to mature and play football with the repetition of “You’ll” and “you” secures the certainty of her son having to grow up, and the mother is understanding this by empathising on it, particularly in the begining as the perfect rhyme empathises this imminent future, and how convinced McCarthy is that her son is going to grow up to be
“common”.
There is a continuous theme of worry that the world of school will be violent and aggressive. The use of alliteration produces an image of potential violence “stiff striped dagger”, the alliteration has harsh continents adding to the aggression of the “dagger”, as they are “stiff” is describing the harsh strength of the dagger and “striped” makes the imagery of the “dagger” pain.
The image of “warpaint slicked over your face”, this imagery is