Last Lesson of the Afternoon

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How does DH Lawrence help you to understand the feelings of the teacher in “Last Lesson of the Afternoon” The poem is told by a teacher in an internal monologue, describing his emotions during the last lesson school lesson of an afternoon. The poem starts with a rhetorical question ‘when will the bell ring and end this weariness’, immediately setting the tone and showing that the teacher is very bored. The poem contains many rhetorical questions – which shows his frustration due to the amount of questions he is asking himself and also as rhetorical questions have no answer. He describes his pupils in a metaphor as ‘unruly hounds’, the comparison to animals showing their incompetence. The poet uses emotive words such as ‘I can haul them and urge them no more’, showing the difficulty and actual physical effort that gone in to teaching them. He cannot get them ‘to chase knowledge’, like dogs would chase their prey. He says he ‘cannot start them again’, showing that he was been pushed to the edge and that he can’t cope. This is reinforced with the opening line of the next stanza in which the teacher says ‘no longer can I endure the brunt’. This stanza also contains an ascending trio of ‘of’s’. The use of this shows how he has been continually and repeatedly ignored and how his frustration has risen. He is ‘insulted’ by the work of his pupils and their ‘slovenly work’ and the fact that he says that ‘he is sick’ shows he has actually been made ill by their lack of attention. ‘I will take my last dear fuel of life to heap on my soul’. The poet uses this emotive phrase to show that he is really on the edge and the fact he uses the word ‘soul’, shows that he has been scarred deep within by ‘their dross of indifference’. The stanza finishes with a short sentence ‘I will not’. This short sentence is really the turning point of the poems tone – from negative to positive.
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