The Lesson - Roger Mcgough

The Lesson – Roger McGough (1937-)
General assignments
 Paraphrase
It’s about chaos in the classroom, and how to solve this. The teacher is using violence to control the students (swords and all) and The Head is supporting that. The writer tries to make this story funny, but still wants it to have a deeper meaning and make you think.
 Meaning
The meaning is that you shouldn’t use violence in the classroom (it isn’t a solution), but you should be able to control a class.
 Intentions
The writer wants to make us laugh, but also think about situations in classrooms and how teachers might handle them.
 Language
The writer exaggerates a lot and uses a lot of adverbs and adjectives to draw you in and make the poem more lively.
 Setting o Place: In a classroom o Time: Could be at any time, is applicable to present classrooms/teachers but also to situations a long time ago. o Social: Development of education o Cultural: In a western society where the students often challenge teachers and are not very obedient (compared to for example Chinese schools).
 Notes
- Aantekeningen:
1. He wants to pay attention to chaos in UK classrooms. It wouldn’t help if the teacher is violent.
2. He would like us to think about it, by exaggerating. He wants to make us laugh.
3. Ordinary language to exaggerate.
- “I’m going to teach you a lesson
One that you’ll never forget” (second stanza, double meaning!)
- Throttled = wurgen
Garroted = met touw
Grotty = nasty
Skive = spijbelen
Dinghie = kleine opblaasboot
Carnage = bloedbad
 Literary terms
- Alliteration
Chaos classroom (line 1)
The teacher (line 2)
Hooligans him (line 3)
The theme today (line 5)
To teach (line 7)
Who was (line 9)
Throttled then there (line 10)
Then the (line 11)
Garroted girl (line 11)
Hand he hacked his (line 13)
First first (line 15)
Fingers feet (line 16)
Threw the (line 17)
He his (line 20)
The the (line 21) Blast backrow (line 21)
Where who (line 22)
Plug’s pulled (line 24)
The to temple (line 28)
The the (line 29)
Head head (line 29)
Why was (line 30)
Then tossed (line 32)
When was well (line 33)
Silence shuffled (line35)
Its in (line 36)
The teacher the (line 37)
The the (line 38)
Dying dead (line 38)

- Assonance (some examples in this poem)
Hooligans ignored him (line 3)
His in din (line 4)
That never forget (line 8)
On boy (line 9)
- Euphemism
His game (line 20) instead of his battle or murdering
- Hyperbole
Isn’t this whole poem a hyperbole?
Throttled him then and there (line 10)
Garroted the girl behind him (line 11) etc.
- Imagery (KLOPT DIT?)
Trembling vandal (line 26)
- Metaphor
Chattering rows (line 14)
Silence shuffled forward with its hands up in the air (lines 35-36)
- Narrator
Third-person: omniscient narrator. You know this by the absence of ‘I’ and ‘You’ and the use of ‘He’/’She’.
- Onomatopoeia
Chattering (line 14)
Waggled (line 39)
- Oxymoron
Trembling vandal (line 26)
- Personification
Silence shuffled forward with its hands up in the air (lines 35-36)
- Rhythm
Iambic tetrameter/trimeter???
- Simile
They collapsed like rubber dinghies (line 23)
- Stanza
There are 10 stanza’s of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is:
Abcb (classroom, in, him, din)
Defe (violence, set, lesson, forget)
Ghch (shouting, there, him, hair)
I j k j (way, rows, declared, toes)
Lmnm (latecomer, aim, shotgun, game)
Opqp (backrow, out, dinghies, out)
Rsts (sir, enquired, teacher, fired)
Uvwv (doorway, made, understandingly, genade)
Xhyh (spent, chair, forward, air)
Ze1e (carnage, dead, severely, said)
- Tone
The tone is playful.