V4 The Lesson

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 4

V4 The Lesson

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The Lesson -
Explain the double meaning of the title "The Lesson"

What is the rhyme scheme of the poem?

How many stanzas does the poem have?

Give an example of a pun in the poem

'First come, first severed' he declared

Pun = a play on words

Original expression: First come, first served.

Pun: First come, first seVERed 

->the first one to talk is helped (served) in such a way that his/her fingers/feet/toes are cut off

The Head popped a head round the doorway

The Head = headmaster

To pop a head round the doorway  = to quickly look around the doorway

To pop a head = to shoot someone in the head

Give examples of alliteration in the poem

Give an example of consonance in the poem

Give the line that contains personification in the poem

Indicate the lines in the poem that contain irony

Irony

 In the poem's ironic final line, the teacher smugly declares "Let that be a lesson” to a room full of “the dying and the dead”.

At the start his voice was "lost in the din" of the student's chatter, now his voice falls on ears that literally can't hear at all. 

The teacher's outburst of violence may have been satisfying for himself, it didn’t do anything to improve students’ ability to learn - they're dead now.

Give an example of hyperbole in the poem

Hyperbole

A teacher murders an entire group of students to teach them a “lesson” about how to behave in class. In taking the idea of corporal punishment to an absurd, violent extreme, this gruesome fantasy makes a serious point: there is no role for physical discipline in the classroom. For one thing, the poem implies, corporal punishment is cruel. For another, it’s ineffective: after all, when “the carnage” ends, there are no students left alive for the teacher to wag his “finger severely” at—that is, there are no students left to teach!