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

Double meaning of The Lesson

The lesson = 

literally what a teacher teaches

figuratively to punish someone (in this case the students)

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

Hyperbole = Extreme exaggeration

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. 

The poem implies that corporal punishment is cruel and ineffective. 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!

Stanza

A group of lines that belongs together in a poem

(a stanza in a poem is what a paragraph is in a novel)

Personification

Personification  = a non-human thing/idea is given a human attribute

Example in The Lesson:

Chaos ruled OK in the classroom

Silence shuffled forward

with its hands up in the air

(Chaos = a thing/idea and cannot rule, humans can rule)

(Silence = a thing/idea and cannot shuffle or hold its hands up like a human being)

Euphemism

Euphemism =  a polite or mild word or expression used to refer to something embarrassing, taboo, or unpleasant

Examples of euphemisms in common language:

To go to the bathroom (to pee)

To pass away (to die)

A bun in the oven (pregnant)

The Lesson does not use euphemisms but hyperboles