Child And Insect Commentary

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The poem Child and Insect by Robert Druce is a recollection of a little boy’s experience in catching a grasshopper which shows a transition from the boy’s innocence to the realization of truth in life. In the themes of innocence, humanity, nature, the speaker uses a wide range of literary devices such as alliteration, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia, sensory imagery as well as a changing form and structure to convey the changing tone and mood of the child, distinctly conveying the shifting emotions of the child throughout the poem. The entire poem is mainly divided into four sections – the catching of the grasshopper, the realization that the grasshopper is dead, the guilt of killing the grasshopper and the feeling of betrayal when he realizes the grasshopper is still alive. The tone and mood in the first section, from line 1 to line 6 are lively and exciting as the child successfully catches the grasshopper, indirectly showing the innocence in childhood. The alliteration of H and C used in lines 1 and 2 – ‘’He cannot hold his hand huge enough’’ and ‘’How can he cage the sudden clockwork fizz’’ emphasizes on the child’s action on how he tries to hold the grasshopper safely to stop it from falling. The carefulness the child gives to the grasshopper indirectly conveys his excitement to something new that he experiences, which in this case of catching a grasshopper, shows the innocence of a child since it may already be something old and dull to adults, or even teenagers who have had this experience for uncountable times. Then in line 2, the use of personification of the grasshopper as ‘’clockwork fizz’’ also makes the atmosphere more lively. The speaker compares the arms and legs of the grasshopper like that of a clock, long and slim that moves around quickly all around. This vivid description of the grasshopper immediately allows the readers to picture
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