Critical Analysis Poem School over

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The poem, School Over written by Muhammad Haji Salleh take the readers through the mind’s of a teacher at his day at school. It voices out his feeling as a teacher who watches his students daydreaming in his class and rushing out from the classroom when the class is over in spirit and life not shown in class. The paper will proceed to analyze the literary devices, theme, tone, mood and raised issues and concerns in the poem. There are a lot of literary devices used in this poem. The usage of metaphor in line 1 stanza 2 “the bell was life-giver” emphasizes the bell’s power to completely re-ignite the students’ energy. The usage of allusion is also shown in this poem when he elaborates about the girls hiding their mirrors, shown in line 3 stanza 4 “hidden in Shakespeare or Usman Awang” . It also symbolizes the integration of western and eastern knowledge exist in the syllabus. Next, the poet also uses the sense of imagery in line 1 stanza 4, “the girls smoothed their hair”. The usage of the sense may evoke the readers’ imagination of how the girls were smoothing their hair, probably by using their bare hands. Besides, the sense of sounds is also used in this poem when the persona describes the sound of dragging chairs, lines 5-6, stanza 2 “chairs were flung on desks, wood upon wood, dragging”. The use of sensory detail paints better picture of the collective loud sound, probably even provokes annoyance against it. The main theme that stands out throughout the poem is freedom. As the reader, they can feel the sense of freedom in line 2 stanza 2, “sudden god of freedom”. Line 1-9, stanza 3, about the newly energetic boys rushing out from the class as soon as the bell rings, further showcase the main theme. The issues and concerns raised throughout the poem are basically about a teacher watching his students’ behaviour when school time is about to end, the time marked

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