Poem Analysis : First Day at Schol

The ‘First day at School’ takes us through the vast stretch of a child’s mind on his first day of school. It voices the feelings of the child; his unknowing mind of the perplexing new world and how that has aroused a sense of anxiety and insecurity inside him. The poem also lets us delve into the child’s misapprehending of his new phase of life; his misinterpretations and how he had gotten the wrong idea. With that many qualities are conveyed to portray all this. In this poem it proclaims to have a main theme, use of literary devices, tone and mood plus raised issues and concerns. The poem is basically about the child’s confusion in facing the bamboozling world he yet has to explore and discover. His many observations and his deductions on what he sees enacts to the discovery of his naivety and obliviousness. Feelings of apprehension, first -day jitters and diffidence is felt as he went through this life-changing experience. It is shown through his repeated misspelt words (‘…lessins’,’…glassrooms’) and wrong understanding of the ringing of the bell; ‘Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?)’With that, this would be the theme. There are many use of the literary device diction in this poem. Reason so is that the poem is written in a child’s viewpoint, where a child (still in his early years) would have lack the expertise and handiness in his vocabulary and language. Example of use is in the first line ‘millionbillionwillion’ where it was used by the kid to emphasize the lengthy distance of home to school (yet not having the understanding to express in a grammatically correct way). In line 16, ‘lessins’ refers to lessons. A similar ‘mistake’ occurred in line 19; classrooms interpreted as ‘glassrooms.’ Notions like lessons and classrooms are unfamiliar objects to the child, things that he is unaccustomed to. He might have misheard the words, and that tied in with minor knowledge of the outside world has resulted in misspelt words and