Pointers for questions ＡandＢ

A)In the first stanza, the speaker feels unease and is worried for his family members. This can be seen from the fact that he was not able to take lessons in the morning, and waited in “the college sick bay” from morning until 2’o clock in the afternoon. In the third stanza, the speaker felt embarrassed when he was treated as a mature adult by old men who were” standing up to shake my hand”. Also, the fact that they apologised to the speaker made him embarrassed too, and the “whispers informed strangers I was the eldest” made it even worse for him. Also, he probably was shocked to see the other side of his usually stoic father, who “had always taken funerals in his stride” cry so melancholy over the death of his child.

B)The first literary device used in this poem is alliteration. In the seventh and last stanza, the phrase “four foot” is used to show the size and age of the child which passed away in the car accident, by using “a foot for every year”, to indirectly tell the readers that the child died at the age of four years old. Also, the literary device, onomatopoeia and irony are used in the poem also. It can be seen from the third stanza, “the baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram”. The onomatopoeia is “cooed” and irony can be seen from the fact that the child was ignorant of the tragic and the melancholy of the family, and thus was in the mood to coo and laugh despite the sad atmosphere. Also, the speaker also describes in the first paragraph as “counting bells knelling classes to a close”, uses metaphor, by replacing the normal “ringing” of the school bell to “knelling”, signifying inauspiciousness.